In the last 40 days of the war, Russia has been accused of multiple war crimes by Kyiv, including the targeting of civilians.
A Ukrainian MP, Lesia Vasylenk, on Monday claimed that the Russian troops were also torturing women and sexually assaulting girls as horrors of the war continued for civilians.
Sharing disturbing details and images from the war-torn parts of the country, she alleged that women and minor girls, as young as 10 years old, “were raped, tortured and killed” by Russian soldiers amid the ongoing fighting between the two countries.
Tweet by Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko.(@lesiavasylenko)
The statement comes a day after spine-chilling images and footage emerged from Bucha, near the capital city of Kyiv, where bodies were seen scattered on the streets with their hands tied, close-range gunshot wounds and signs of torture.
In a tweet, the MP wrote with an image: “Tortured body of a raped and killed woman. I’m speechless. My@mind is paralyzed with anger and fear and hatred.”
The Ukraine government has accused Russia of war crimes, carrying out a “massacre” in Bucha, which turned into a mass grave with about 410 civilian bodies recovered. Moscow has denied the allegations and requested the United Nations Security Council to convene for a discussion on what its defence ministry called a “provocation by Ukrainian radicals” by Kyiv.
The Ukrainian troops recently regained control of the Kyiv region, including Bucha, from their Russian counterparts. Images were widely circulated of a slit trench where the bodies laid, while the grave was behind a church in the town centre.
While talks are set to resume on Monday, Ukraine has, so far, proposed abandoning its aspirations to join NATO and declaring official neutrality, if it obtains security guarantees from Western countries. It also offered temporarily shelving the question of Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, and two breakaway territories in the Donbas that Russia has recognised as independent.