Russians snipers abused child and gang-raped her mother in Kyiv Oblast
Ukraine has accused Russian soldiers Vadim Shakhmatov and Evgeny Chernoknizhnyy of sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl and gang-raping her mother at gunpoint in front of her father during the occupation in the Brovary district of Kyiv Oblast.
Source: Reuters with reference to materials from the Ukrainian Prosecutor's Office, Meduza
Details: The Prosecutor's Office has stated that the incidents were among a spree of sex crimes Russian soldiers of the 15th Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade committed in four homes in the Brovary district near the capital Kyiv in March 2022.
According to law enforcement officials, during Moscow's failed push to capture Kyiv after its 24 February invasion, soldiers entered Brovary a few days later, looting and using sexual violence as a deliberate tactic to terrorise the population, the Ukrainian prosecutors said.
"They singled out the women beforehand, coordinated their actions and their roles," said the prosecutors, whose 2022 documents were based on interviews with witnesses and survivors.
Most of the alleged atrocities took place on 13 March, when soldiers "in a state of alcoholic intoxication broke into the yard of a house where a young family lived," the prosecutors allege.
The father was beaten with a metal pot then forced to kneel while his wife was gang-raped. One of the soldiers told the four-year-old girl he "will make her a woman" before she was abused, the documents said.. The family survived.
Prosecutors said they are investigating additional crimes in the area including murders during the same period.
In total, six invaders are suspected of perpetrating the attack in Brovary. According to the prosecutor's office, the attack on the girl and her parents was carried out by two snipers, aged 32 and 28.
After the alleged attack on the girl and her parents, the two soldiers entered the house of an elderly couple next door, where they beat them, prosecutors said, also raping a 41-year-old pregnant woman and a 17-year-old girl.
In another place where several families lived, the soldiers forced everyone into the kitchen and gang-raped a 15-year-old girl and her mother, they said.
All the victims survived and are receiving psychological and medical assistance, the prosecutor's office reported.
A pre-trial investigation into the possible role of senior officials in the attacks in Brovary is ongoing. This case is attached to other allegations of systematic sexual violence by Russian soldiers.
As for the two rapist snipers, according to the prosecutors, the elder one of them is dead, and the younger one, named Yevgeniy Chernoknizhniy, returned to Russia.
When Reuters asked the prosecutor's office to name both soldiers, the prosecutor's office provided only the name of the younger man. When reporters called his number which appeared in online databases, a man who identified himself as Chernoknizhny's brother said he had died.
"He is dead. There's no way you can get hold of him," said the man, crying. "That's all that I can say."
Reuters was unable to independently confirm his assertion.
"Meduza" specifies that the second sniper is Vadim Shakhmatov. According to the National Police of Ukraine, he is the one who raped the girl.
Russia's Defence Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The telephone numbers of the 15th Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade of the Russian Federation did not work. Two officers from the Samara garrison, which includes the brigade, could not provide contact details for the unit, and one of them told Reuters they were classified.
The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine says it is investigating more than 71,000 reports of war crimes received during the full-scale war.
Russia has consistently denied both its aggression and the atrocities of its military.
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