Ukrainian women beginning to talk about wartime sexual assault

Support group helping such victims says many remain silent, isolated and even suicidal

- Carlotta Gall and Oleksandr Chubko

KYIV - A 77-year-old former high school teacher, turned out in a neat dress and hat, has been creating a quiet revolution in the villages of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine.

Standing before a group of 10 women in a tent in the centre of a village in Ukraine's south last summer, she recounted her ordeal three years ago under Russian occupation.

"What I went through," said the woman, named Liudmyla, her voice wavering. "I was beaten, I was raped, but I am still living, thanks to these people."

Beginning in 2024, Liudmyla and two other survivors, Tetyana, 61, and Alisa Kovalenko, 37, have spoken at a series of village meetings to raise awareness about conflict-related sexual violence.

The meetings have been among the first efforts by survivors of sexual assault to bring into the open one of the most painful aspects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: what prosecutors and humanitarian workers say is widespread sexual assault of Ukrainian women under Russian occupation.

Liudmyla and Tetyana asked that their surnames and village names not be published to protect their privacy. Ms Kovalenko has long spoken openly about the assault on her, which occurred in 2014 during the war with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Relatively few women in Ukraine have come forward to report cases of rape during the conflict because of the stigma attached to sexual assault in Ukrainian society, which is deeply religious and conservative, especially in rural areas.

Prosecutors have registered more than 344 cases of conflict-related sexual violence in Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion began in February 2022, 220 of them women, including 16 underage girls.