It is March 2022 and Daria Zymenko is at her parents’ house in the village of Havronshtyna, to which she fled after the fighting approached Kiev. Then some Russian soldiers break into the house. They are drunk, armed and order Daria to come with them. She will be interrogated.
Daria’s parents plead in vain with the Russians to let their daughter be.
– The Russian occupiers had their guns pointed at us and said: “If you speak again, we will shoot you. Either she comes with us or we will kill you,” said Daria, 33, during a press conference in Paris, according to the news agency AFP.
In the end, Daria Zymenko is forced to go with the soldiers. They put her in a car and drive to an abandoned house, which used to belong to one of her neighbors.
– My eyes were closed. They took me upstairs and told me to undress. I realized that this was not going to be an interrogation, but something else. Sexual violence. It lasted two hours, says Daria Zymenko.
The next day it happens again. Shortly afterwards, the Ukrainian forces succeed in retaking the village of Havronshtyna. Daria manages to get back to her family, but she now carries a heavy secret.
– I saw their faces and realized that I could not admit what I had just been through, that it would get even worse.
“Not just statistics”
At first, Daria Zymenko does not tell anyone about the rapes. She wants to suppress it. But when she repeatedly suffers from anxiety attacks, she realizes that she has to talk about it.
– I want the whole world to know. I want them to see me as a person and not just a statistic, she says during the press conference with the organization Sema, which brings together women who have been subjected to sexual violence during the war.
Now she has decided to break the taboo and prevent vulnerable people from being stigmatized. But she also wants to draw attention to the problem, which continues.
– Sexual crimes continue to be committed (in Ukraine), the Russian army continues to torture and kill people and continues to commit sexual crimes, she says.
Raped by commander
And Daria Zymenko is far from the only one affected. According to Ukrainian authorities, sexual violence is a systematic part of Russian warfare.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, roughly 300 cases of sexual violence committed by Russian soldiers have been registered. The number in the dark is assumed to be large, not least because of the widespread stigma.
Documentary maker Alisa Kovalenko was sexually assaulted in Donetsk back in 2014, while working on her film “Alisa in Warland”. For several days she was held captive and repeatedly raped by a Russian commander.
She estimates that around 80 percent of Ukrainian women who have fallen victim to sexual violence do not dare to speak out.
– But the 20 percent who do it already constitute a revolution, she says in Paris, according to AFP.
Taking Viagra
Even Alisa Kovalenko has had difficulty talking about the abuse, but does so in the hope of empowering others and lifting the taboo. To this day she has nightmares.
– You cannot heal from such an experience. You can only feel better, she says.
Already in the months after the invasion in 2022, UN envoy Pramila Patten raised the alarm that Russia is using rape as a weapon. Women are held captive and raped for days, she stated. Since then, several studies have reached the same conclusion.
– When you hear women testifying about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it is clear that it is a military strategy, Patten told AFP.