The allegations are horrific... 80-year-old women raped, 4-month-old babies missing!

As Russia's occupation of Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, enters its 19th month, it is reported that there is evidence that sexual violence against women continues in the occupied regions. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has published a report confirming war crimes after evidence-gathering trips to Ukraine. The UN's latest report reads as follows: "In the Kherson region, the Commission found that Russian soldiers raped and sexually assaulted women aged between 19 and 83, often accompanied by threats or other abuses. Family members are often kept in an adjoining room, forcing them to hear the violations taking place." Previously, the media reported on a woman who was raped after her husband was killed by Russian soldiers. In the details of the news in Insider; Just before the attack, the 4-year-old child was taken to the next room by his mother, but when the child screamed, the attackers put a gun to the child's head and threatened to blow his mother's brains out.

THERE ARE REPORTS OF GANG RAPE Lesia Vasylenko of the Ukrainian Parliament also said at the beginning of last year, "We have reports of women being gang raped. These women are usually those who cannot go out. We are talking about senior citizens," she said, expressing the brutality. After Vasylenko's statements, reports of sexual violence perpetrated by Russian troops and encouraged by commanders increased, prompting international investigations into the incidents. Large protests were organized in the UK and Poland against the atrocities targeting civilians in the occupied territories, including Kherson and Bucha. Although the victims of sexual violence are mostly women, the selection of victims is not based on gender. "When women are detained for days and raped, when young boys and men are raped, when you see a series of female genital mutilation, when you hear women testifying about Viagra-equipped Russian soldiers, you see that this is clearly a military strategy," said Pramila Patten, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict.

RAPE AS A WEAPON OF WAR The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court classifies rape and sexual violence, including sexual slavery, forced prostitution and sterilization, as a type of war crime and crime against humanity. A 2014 UN report on sexual violence in wartime states: "Rape committed during war is often intended to terrorize populations, break up families, destroy communities and, in some cases, change the ethnic composition of future generations." The International Criminal Court has launched an investigation into alleged war crimes in Ukraine, but legal action is unlikely for many years.

CHILDREN MISSING Another striking issue in the report published by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine was children. According to the allegations, Ukrainian children as young as 4 months old are being forcibly taken to Russia. And the authorities have no information about what happened to these children. The Commission found that there is a lack of information on the exact number of children taken so far and where they are now. While Kremlin officials claim to have rescued the children, international observers have called the forced removal of Ukrainian children - including babies under four months old - a war crime.

RUSSIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYED, UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE BANNED An estimate from the Yale School of Public Health puts the number of Ukrainian children displaced or deported since the start of the war in the hundreds of thousands. At least 6,000 of these children are being held in a series of Russian camps, where they are being treated and re-educated to make their personal and political views more pro-Russian. According to the Yale report, the number of children taken may be high because Russian forces have targeted vulnerable locations in Ukraine, such as orphanages. The report also noted that Russia operates at least 43 known facilities dedicated to providing Ukrainian children forcibly removed from their homes with re-education, military training and pro-Russian academic training.

Children rescued from these camps say they were forbidden to speak Ukrainian, forced to listen to the Russian national anthem, and told that their parents had abandoned them.