The statistics also include 20 incidents that occurred before the full-scale invasion and had not been reported previously. In the report, one case is counted as one victim, although the same person may have been subjected to violence several times.
According to the mission, 725 recorded cases among victims of actions by the Russian side involved men. Prisoners of war and civilians held in places of detention were especially often subjected to sexualized violence.
The UN lists rapes, including gang rapes, genital mutilation, electric torture, beatings, forced nudity, and threats of sexual violence. The youngest victim was a four-year-old girl, the oldest was an 82-year-old woman; responsibility for both cases was assigned to the Russian side.
The mission writes that representatives of the Russian Federation used sexualized violence during arrests, transport, interrogations, detention, preparation for exchange, and release. The authors of the report believe that the Russian authorities did not take any significant measures to prevent and investigate such crimes and did not cooperate with the UN mission on this issue.
The UN assigned responsibility for 11% of cases to the Ukrainian side. Among the suspected perpetrators are employees of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), military personnel, and workers of penitentiary institutions; in almost half of the incidents, the issue was only threats of sexual violence, but the mission also documented forced nudity, torture, two sexual assaults, and two attempted rapes.
The report is based on confidential interviews with hundreds of victims, court materials, and official registers. The UN mission did not have access to Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia and was able to interview only about 10% of people released by both sides, so the real number of cases may be higher.
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