Russian troops ‘raping women and slaughtering families hiding in basements’ in horror Ukraine invasion, claims survivor
EVIL Russian troops are allegedly raping women and slaughtering families hiding in their basements as they rampage through Ukrainian cities.
Anastasia Taran, 30, has accused Putin's brutal soldiers of raping women in the Russian-occupied city of Irpin - which has been under attack from Russia's invading forces for nearly a month.
Ukraine's foreign minister previously confirmed there had been reports of Putin's soldiers sexually assaulting Ukrainian women.
Anastasia said Russian troops have been storming basements and shooting terrified families as fierce fighting continues in Irpin.
The former waitress, who has lived in the Kyiv suburb for four years, said: "Irpin is hell. There are plenty of Russian soldiers out there who just shoot people who enter private homes and, at best, just kick people out of their homes.
"They rape women and the dead are just being dumped. They open the basements where people are hiding and shoot them."
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Anastasia said she and her husband spent a week without internet, electricity, heating, or water in the Russian-controlled city, reports.
Irpin was home to 110,000 people before the war - but now the majority of the population have fled.
In Kherson, another Russian-occupied city, Svetlana Zorina, 27, also accused the invading Russian forces of sexually assaulting women.
Svetlana said people living in the Black Sea port city can only "sit at home and take care of ourselves because we are scared".
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Earlier this month, she told : "They already started to rape our women.
"There was information from people that I personally know that a 17-year-old girl - it happened to her and then they killed her."
She added: “We are terrified and scared but we are not going to give up."
Svetlana said leaving the house had now become too "dangerous".
She told talkRadio: "They started to rape our women so now it's very dangerous to go outside, especially when it's dark.
"I heard about a few cases from people I know, unfortunately."
It comes after a group of Ukrainian MPs accused Russian troops of raping and executing elderly Ukrainian women.
Lesia Vasylenko, an MP for Ukraine’s opposition Holos party, claimed many female “senior citizens” had taken their own lives after they were sexually abused, in a bid to escape the violence.
Ms Vasylenko said: “When Putin was unable to take Ukraine and Kyiv in the three days as he envisaged that he would, he shifted his strategy to target specifically women and children.
“We have reports now through Ukraine, especially in cities which were hit the hardest, of women who were raped.
“These women are usually the ones who are unable to get out. We are talking about senior citizens.
"Most of these women, we have reports they have either been executed after the crime of rape or they have taken their own lives."
WAR CRIMES
The vulnerable groups of women are said to have been targeted in the areas around Kyiv, in Bucha and Irpin.
Maria Mezentseva, Ukrainian MP for Servant of the People Party, added: "The ladies who were raped and suffered sexual violence, some of them were also hanged.
"These are the facts we are gathering for evidence on war crimes and to take to the ECHR."
Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba previously alleged there have been reports of Putin's soldiers sexually assaulting Ukrainian women.
He told a briefing at Chatham House: "We have numerous cases of, unfortunately, when Russian soldiers rape women in the Ukrainian cities."
Kuleba backed a call for the creation of a special tribunal to punish Moscow's aggression as Russia's hostility escalates beyond bombing.
Kuleba said international law "is the only tool of civilisation that is available to us to make sure that in the end, eventually, all those who made this war possible will be brought to justice".
Human rights organisations have already warned sexual violence against Ukrainian women would likely increase as a result of the conflict.
Freedom from Torture director Steve Crawshaw told The Independent: "We saw torture when Moscow was seeking to impose with dramatic force in Chechnya.
"The pattern of torture became absolutely notorious. And rape was definitely part of that.
“Again and again in the context of conflict, we see torture used as a form of punishment and violation.
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"It is mindless violence with terrible consequences for those who suffer it.
“In the context of war, women are often targeted as a form of brutal dehumanising, with rape, including gang rape, routinely used as a weapon of war."
