'They Are Killers, Rapists And Looters': Ukrainian Woman Recounts Sickening Russian Atrocities

A Ukrainian woman in Kyiv has opened up about being brutally raped by a Russian soldier, who also shot dead her husband as he tried to save her. The 50-year-old woman lives in a quiet, rural neighborhood, 45 miles west of Kyiv, from where the Russian forces recently retreated.

The 50-year-old woman, identified as Anna, told BBC News that a soldier barged into her house on March 7. "At gunpoint, he took me to a house nearby. He ordered me: "Take your clothes off or I'll shoot you." He kept threatening to kill me if I didn't do as he said. Then he started raping me," she said. Anna also identified her attacker as a young Chechen fighter.

Anna added that four other soldiers entered the house as she was being raped. Though she feared for her life, the soldiers took the rapist away. She believes the men belonged to a separate unit of Russian soldiers.

The Chechen had also shot her husband in his abdomen. "He had tried to run after me to save me, but he was hit by a round of bullets," she said. The family couldn't take him to the hospital due to the fighting and he died two days later.

She added that the soldiers, who saved her from the rapist, stayed in her house for a few days. They looted all her husband's belongings. "When they left, I found drugs and Viagra. They would get high, and they were often drunk. Most of them are killers, rapists and looters. Only a few are OK," she told BBC News.

The people near Anna's home said the Chechen man had also raped and murdered another woman in a nearby house. The woman, who was in her 40s, was dragged to a nearby house where she was raped and murdered.

She was later buried in the garden of the house by Russian soldiers who found her body. They also scrawled a message, hinting where she was buried. "They [Russian soldiers] told me she had been raped and that her throat was either slit or stabbed, and she bled to death. They said there was a lot of blood," Oksana, a neighbor of Anna, told the news outlet.

Several such cases have been documented, according to Ukraine's ombudsman for human rights Lyudmyla Denisova. "About 25 girls and women aged 14 to 24 were systematically raped during the occupation in the basement of one house in Bucha. Nine of them are pregnant," Denisova was quoted by BBC News. "Russian soldiers told them they would rape them to the point where they wouldn't want sexual contact with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children."

She said authorities were receiving several calls on support helplines and were also getting information through channels on the Telegram messaging app.