Ukraine accuses Russian military of raping four-year-old girl and mother in front of her father

Ukraine has accused two Russian soldiers of raping a four-year-old girl and raping her mother in front of her father.

According to the agency Reuters, the father was beaten with a metal pot and then forced to his knees, and the woman was gang-raped. According to Ukraine’s incriminating documents, one of the soldiers told the four-year-old girl that he would “make a woman out of her” before she was abused.

For files to which Reuters had access, the incidents came amid a wave of sexual crimes committed by Russian military personnel in four houses in the Brovarsky district near the capital Kyiv in March 2022.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, soldiers entered Brovary a few days later, using sexual violence as a tactic to intimidate the population, according to Ukrainian prosecutors.

Most of the alleged atrocities took place on March 13, when soldiers “intoxicated broke into the yard of a house where a young family lived,” they added.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said it was investigating more than 71,000 war crimes reports received after Russia sent tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine.

According to the same source, Ukrainian investigators know that the likelihood of finding and punishing suspects is low, but there are international efforts to bring war crimes to justice, including by the International Criminal Court.

To date, Ukrainian prosecutors have convicted 26 Russians of war crimes, including rape.

The Russian government of Vladimir Putin denies the atrocities.