The UN has documented more than 1,000 cases of sexual violence against Ukrainians during the war
On September 18, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a report by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine on sexual violence amid Russia’s full-scale armed attack on Ukraine. The report documents more than a thousand cases of sexual violence committed against Ukrainians during the war.
According to the mission’s press service, the report describes “shocking practices of sexual violence” taking place amid Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. The monitoring mission found that sexual violence was perpetrated against both the civilian population and prisoners of war, particularly as part of “torture, intimidation, and coercion.”
Between February 24, 2022, and July 31, 2026, the mission documented approximately 1,004 cases of sexual violence. Approximately 89% of these, or 892 cases, were committed by representatives of Russian authorities—military personnel, prison service employees, and national security service representatives. Another 11% of the documented cases were committed by representatives of Ukrainian authorities.
According to the UN, among the victims of sexual violence committed by Russian military personnel and officials were 725 men, 151 women, 14 girls, and two boys. The mission identified three main circumstances under which such crimes occurred:
- against Ukrainian prisoners of war and medical workers who were held in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine or on Russian territory;
- against Ukrainian civilians who were held in detention facilities in the occupied territories or in the Russian Federation;
- against the civilian population in residential areas of Ukraine that were under the control of Russian troops at the time.
The vast majority of documented victims of sexual violence were men, particularly among those held in places of detention. At the same time, women and children were also victimized—mostly in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Among the cases documented by the mission were gang rapes, genital mutilation, the use of electric shocks and beatings to the genital area, as well as other forms of degrading treatment of a sexual nature.
“The youngest documented survivor of rape was a four-year-old girl, and the oldest was an 82-year-old woman. In both cases, the sexual violence was committed by representatives of Russian authorities,” the report states.
As a reminder, on September 18, Ukrainian law enforcement officials announced that they had charged two employees of a Russian penal colony in the Tula region, whom investigators believe were involved in the systematic torture of Ukrainian civilian prisoners.
Earlier, the National Police of Ukraine identified one of the direct perpetrators of the torture of a Ukrainian civilian in occupied Simferopol. The man was illegally detained for over eight months in Pretrial Detention Center No. 2, where he was systematically beaten, humiliated because of his nationality, and tortured with stun guns.
