Russian soldiers are 'gang-raping and torturing civilians in Ukraine with four-year-old girl among victims', report finds

Russian soldiers are committing widespread sexual violence and torturing civilians in Ukraine, a new United Nations report has found. The document, which logged 1,004 verified cases of conflict-related violence between February 2022 and July 2026, said Russian authorities carried out ​sexual violence against Ukrainian prisoners of war, as well as civilians.Violations included gang rape, rape, genital mutilation and the use of electric shocks on men's genitals with a Soviet-era field telephone known as a 'tapik'.The findings ‌are based ⁠on interviews with victims of sexual violence committed by both sides, and according to one account, a four-year-old Ukrainian girl was among the youngest victims of gang rape.Of the reported cases, 89 per cent were attributed to the Russian side, including members of the armed forces, prison service and security agencies, ​while 11 per cent were linked to Ukraine, including members of the Ukrainian armed forces. While most victims in detention were men, particularly prisoners of war and detainees, women and children were also affected, mainly in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.'Sexual violence in conflict is often misunderstood to be mainly affecting women and girls, where in the Ukraine war context, the majority of survivors are men,' Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said.'And men ​and women require different solutions and ​approaches to their recovery,' she ⁠said. Russian soldiers are committing widespread sexual violence and torturing civilians in Ukraine, according to a UN report. (File photo: Russian soldiers pose for a photo in a shelter in an undisclosed location in Ukraine, 2024) Ukrainian prisoners of war have been subjected to horrific forms of abuse. Pictured: Ukrainian troops onboard a bus after surrendering to Russia In one horrific account, a woman claimed that a Russian soldier had moved into her home in Zaporizhzhia where he raped her several times a week for a month.In exchange, she claims he told her her husband, who was in captivity, would be treated better. Another woman said a Russian soldier forced his way into her home in Kherson and would rape her every night, and threatened to gang rape her. In another case, a woman described how two Russian soldiers gang-raped her after killing her husband, and threatened to kill her four-year-old son if she resisted. The report concluded that Russia had failed to take steps to prevent, investigate or prosecute sexual violence committed by its personnel and had not engaged with OHCHR's requests for information. In Ukrainian government-controlled territory, ​nearly half of the violations attributed to Ukrainian authorities against Russian and third-country prisoners of war and ​detainees involved threats of ⁠sexual violence and beatings to the genitals. 'I ​am deeply alarmed by the prevalence of these abhorrent acts documented in our report, and fear that they are almost certainly continuing amid the unceasing violence we are witnessing every ​day in Ukraine,' said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk. The new report comes as thousands of Ukrainians are starving to death in a frontline city which has been cut off by Russian troops.All roads leading away from the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky in southern Ukraine have been littered with mines by Russian soldiers, trapping 2,000 people inside.Constant Russian drone attacks and artillery shelling have made it impossible to deliver essential food and medicine supplies, mortally endangering the remaining population, which includes around 50 children.In desperation, residents are attempting to flee via the 'Death Road' to the southern city of Skadovsk.But the 62-mile route is life-threatening: the road is full of mines and Russian drones target anything that moves.'These people need to be saved,' Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's human rights ombudsman, said on September 16, adding that residents are desperate to escape 'from this hell'.Those who die are no longer buried, because even the mortuary has been bombed.Bodies lie in cellars or on the streets, where, according to witnesses, they are being gnawed at by dogs.The city in the Kherson Oblast used to have a prewar population of about 24,000. women and children were also affected, mainly in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. File image: Women take shelter inside a metro station during a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine September 8, 2026 A view shows an apartment building hit by Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine July 24, 2025This spring, amid a catastrophic humanitarian situation, volunteers were still able to evacuate civilians from the city despite the risks.But now, volunteers say even those evacuation efforts are too dangerous, leaving Ukrainian civilians trapped in the occupied city, facing imminent starvation.The Russian military continues to use towns and villages on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast to launch attacks across the river, including on Kherson, which the Ukrainian army liberated in November 2022.Oleshky is an occupied frontline city on the eastern bank, where civilians live amid Putin's soldiers and attacks from both Ukrainian and Russian forces.'People are driven to despair and are simply walking along mined roads (to escape),' an Oleshky resident - whose identity is being withheld for security reasons - told the Kyiv Independent.The starvation is so extreme that residents are eating grass and searching in destroyed cellars for anything edible.Meanwhile, victims of drone attacks may only be buried by the Russian occupier after an autopsy in another occupied city.Kyiv had previously prepared a humanitarian evacuation mission for Oleshky and approved a list of civilians who needed to leave, according to Lubinets.The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had also expressed readiness to be involved, while Ukrainian forces had been preparing to ensure a ceasefire during the operation.But the Kremlin has not confirmed its readiness to proceed, Lubinets said, causing the humanitarian crisis to only deepen.