War crime investigators have uncovered horrific allegations of sexual violence against Ukrainians since the Russian invasion.
Warning: this article contains stories of sexual assault and rape.
The detectives have been told Russian soldiers kept more than two dozen women and girls in a basement in Bucha for 25 days.
Ukraine’s official ombudsman for human rights, Lyudmyla Denisova, said she had recorded multiple cases of rape and torture.
Advert
She says nine of the hostages are also now pregnant.
Since troops withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv, the full extent of atrocities committed against the Ukrainian citizens has surfaced.
Denisova told the BBC: “About 25 girls and women aged 14 to 24 were systematically raped during the occupation in the basement of one house in Bucha. Nine of them are pregnant.
“Russian soldiers told them they would rape them to the point where they wouldn't want sexual contact with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children."
Advert
The frightening details came after Russia was accused of war crimes following the discovery of hundreds of bodies in Bucha.
Ukraine is currently investigating the discovery to build a case against Russia, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling the mass slayings a ‘genocide’.
He said: “Hundreds of people were killed. Tortured, executed civilians. Corpses on the streets. Mined areas. Even the bodies of the dead were booby-trapped.”
Meanwhile, the Kremlin claims no residents in Bucha suffered any violence from their soldiers.
Advert
One woman from the rural neighbourhood spoke to BBC about her own horrendous experiences.
She said: “At gunpoint, he took me to a house nearby. He ordered me: 'Take your clothes off or I'll shoot you.' He kept threatening to kill me if I didn't do as he said."
She said she was saved from the man by a separate unit of Russian soldiers.
She continued: “While he was raping me, four more soldiers entered. I thought that I was done for. But they took him away. I never saw him again.”
Denisova has appealed to the UN Human Rights Commission to ‘take into account these facts of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.’
Advert
She wrote on Facebook: “The level of brutality of the army of terrorists and executioners of the Russian Federation knows no bounds – raped children.
“There is no place on earth or in hell where racist criminals can hide from retribution!”
Senior UN official Sima Bahous told the Security Council that all allegations were being independently investigated however, the cases were raising ‘all red flags’.
Jayden Collins