A United Nations official claims that Russia is using rape as part of its “military strategy” in Ukraine, even providing soldiers with drugs to increase their libido.
“When you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy,” Pramila Patten, UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, told the AFP Friday.
Patten was responding to a reporter who asked if rape was being used as a weapon of war in Ukraine.
“And when the victims report what was said during the rapes, it is clearly a deliberate tactic to dehumanize the victims,” she added.
The United Nations has verified “more than a hundred cases” of rape or sexual assault since the war began in February, said Patten.
The official referred to a UN report released in late September than "confirmed crimes against humanity committed by the Russian forces, and according to gathered testimonies, the age of the victims of sexual violence ranges from four to 82 years old.”
She added that men and boys were also victimized.
"There are many cases of sexual violence against children who are raped, tortured and kept hostage," she said.
Ukraine held its first trial of a Russian soldier charged with raping a civilian woman in June – Russian commander Mikhail Romanov, 32, who was of raping a 33-year-old woman in a village outside Kyiv with another soldier three times over the course of one evening after shooting her husband dead.
The woman, who told her story to The Times of London under the pseudonym “Natalya,” said that her son was crying in the boiler room the entire time. Romanov had to be tried in absentia.
