Ukrainian Senior Citizens Being Gang-Raped By Russian Soldiers: Ukraine MP

Russian soldiers sexually abused women in Ukraine, including senior citizens unable to flee from Russia's invasion, said a Ukrainian lawmaker.

"We have reports of women being gang-raped. These women are usually the ones who are unable to get out. We are talking about senior citizens," Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko told journalists while visiting the United Kingdom's parliament on March 17, according to Forbes.

Vasylenko described the victims as "the most vulnerable of the vulnerable," the Daily Mail reported.

"Most of these women have either been executed after the crime of rape, or they have taken their own lives," the Ukrainian MP claimed.

The families of the victims did not "have the strength or the capacity to come forward," Vasylenko added.

Vasylenko's allegations have yet to be investigated, as per Forbes.

Other reports of Russian soldiers raping women in Ukraine have since surfaced.

One of the alleged incidents involved a Russian soldier who broke into a home in the Ukrainian district of Brovary. The soldier allegedly killed the unarmed homeowner before he and another soldier raped the victim's wife.

Russian soldiers were also accused of raping women in the occupied cities of Irpin and Kherson.

Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Iryna Venediktova has opened an investigation into the Brovary case, Inna Sovsun, a member of Ukraine's parliament, revealed in a statement last Tuesday.

Prosecutors in Kyiv have identified the Russian soldier, and he has been reported "on suspicion of violation of laws and customs of war," Venediktova said.

The soldier was declared wanted, and a request for his detention was filed in court, noted the Ukrainian prosecutor-general.

"Let's find every villain and make [them] accountable throughout the strictness of the law!" Venediktova said.

It was not clear if the second soldier involved in the alleged rape had been identified.

The Brovary probe was the first official investigation of a rape case involving a Russian soldier, Sovsun said.

Maria Mezentseva, another Ukrainian MP who serves as the head of Ukraine's permanent delegation to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, said cases of abuse in Ukraine were being underreported, according to The Guardian.

"There are many more victims rather than just this one case which has been made public by the prosecutor general. And of course, we are expecting many more of them, which will be public once victims will be ready to talk about that," Mezentseva said.

Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland have created a joint investigation group to examine Russia's alleged war crimes in its invasion, Venediktova announced Friday.

Aside from the three countries in the joint investigation group, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Slovakia and Estonia have already launched their investigations into Russia's war.