Russian troops 'raped a 16-year-old girl and 78-year-old woman'

Russian troops raped a 16-year-old girl and 78-year-old woman, claim liberated Ukrainians in latest reports of atrocities by Putin’s soldiers

  • Russian troops allegedly raped the girl and grandmother in the Kherson region
  • Putin’s soldiers also shelled a boat that was evacuating 14 people, killing four
  • Ukrainian military official Oleksandr Vilkul said Ukrainians are being ‘confronted with more and more horror stories’ 

Russian troops have allegedly raped a pregnant 16-year-old pregnant girl and a 78-year-old grandmother in a Ukrainian village, a senior military official said, as evidence that Vladimir Putin’s men have been committing war crimes mounts. 

Putin’s troops also shelled a boat that was evacuating 14 civilians from the Kherson region on Thursday, killing four people including a 13-year-old child, Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the military administration of Kryvyi Rih, said.

Vilkul said Ukrainians are being ‘confronted with more and more horror stories’, as he pointed to the alleged rape of a pregnant girl and a grandmother in a village in the Kherson region by Russian soldiers, and the murder of civilians on a boat.

It is the latest in a series of atrocities committed against the Ukrainian people by the Russian invaders. 

Russian troops have allegedly raped a pregnant 16-year-old pregnant girl and a 78-year-old grandmother in a Ukrainian village, a senior military official said, as evidence that Vladimir Putin’s men have been committing war crimes mounts. Pictured: Apartments destroyed by a tank shell in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, on Thursday

A man with a dog search a destroyed school for useful things after it was hit by Russian rockets in the southern Ukraine village of Zelenyi Hai between Kherson and Mykolaiv

Ukrainian military chief Oleksandr Vilkul

‘There is news that makes my blood run cold in my veins,’ Vilkul said in a video posted on Facebook.

‘While rebuilding a peaceful life in the villages liberated in the Kherson region, a task we are currently working on, we are confronted with more and more horror stories.

‘For example, the rape of a 16-year-old pregnant girl and a 78-year-old grandmother in one of the villages towards [the river] Ingulets.’

Vilkul also said on Thursday, Russian ‘orcs’ on the bank of the Kakhovka reservoir near a recreational centre in Marianske, Kryvyi Rhi District, opened fire on a boat that was sailing to evacuate people from the occupied part of the Kherson region.

There were 14 people onboard, including three children. 

Vilkul said two men and one woman died instantly as a result of the Russian attack, whilst a 13-year-old child died soon after. Seven people were hospitalised and two are missing.  

He added: ‘It was the seventh voyage that boat had made. B***ards. This is a war crime, this should be taken to a court in The Hague.’ 

It is the latest in a series of atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

At least 39 people were killed – including four children – and 87 wounded when two Russian rockets struck a railway station in east Ukraine today, as thousands of desperate evacuees tried reach safer parts of the country.

Graphic pictures on Friday from Kramatorsk showed bodies strewn across the floor, lying amongst luggage and children’s prams outside the city’s busy station. 

Some had already been put into green body bags, while other photos showed smoke rising from the building as firefighters rushed to the scene.

Pictures also showed the wreckage of a large missile lying on the grass outside the station. 

White Russian text was shown written down the side of its casing, which read: ‘For (our) Children’ – a chilling revenge message from the pro-Moscow soldiers that launched it.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky took to Instagram to decry the attack, and confirmed the reports of casualties. ‘[Russian forces] are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop,’ he wrote. He said no Ukrainian soldiers were at the station when it was hit.

The Mayor of Kramatorsk Oleksander Honcharenko said there were around 4,000 people at the city’s railway station when it was bombed by at least two rockets. He said most were women, elderly and children preparing to evacuate to safer regions as Russia focuses its troops in eastern Ukraine.

Russian soldiers wrote a chilling message of revenge on the missile (pictured Friday being inspected by Ukrainian investigators) that killed at least 39 people – including four children – and wounded 87 when two strikes hit a railway station in east Ukraine today, as thousands of desperate evacuees tried reach safer parts of the country 

The strike was on Kramatorsk’s train station, with graphic pictures on Friday showing bodies strewn across floor outside, lying amongst abandoned luggage

A view of people’s belongings and bloodstains on the ground after a missile strike on a railway station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, in this picture uploaded on April 8, 2022

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian mother of four told how she wanted to die after being raped for more than 12 hours by Russian soldiers. 

Elena – not her real name – was attacked on April 3 after a Russian sympathiser in the southern Kherson region told the troops her husband was a Ukrainian soldier on the front line.

Describing the assault, Elena, a midwife, said she was in a shop at 3pm when the soldiers came in and began talking to customers.

One pointed at her and said: ‘She’s a banderovka!’ – a term referring to Ukrainian wartime nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis to fight Russia.

Elena said: ‘I quickly left the shop. I just had time to get into my house. Two Russian soldiers came in through the door after me.

‘Without a word, they pushed me on to the bed. They held me down with a rifle and stripped me. They didn’t say much. Sometimes they called me ‘banderovka’ or they said ‘your turn’ to each other. Then, at 4am, they left.’

Sobbing, she said it left her feeling ‘very disgusting’, adding: ‘I don’t want to live.’ She also vowed to find those who betrayed her, warning: ‘I will point the finger at the people who singled me out. I will point them out to my husband.’

Alina Kryvoulyak, of La Strada, a women’s rights group, said: ‘There could be thousands of women and young girls who have been raped.’

Russian troops also allegedly raped two teenage sisters aged 15 and 16 in a small village outside Kyiv which was brutally occupied by Putin’s forces for as month, its deputy mayor has claimed.

Ivankiv, fifty miles north-west of Kyiv, was finally reconnected to the rest of the wartorn country thanks to a pontoon bridge built by Ukrainian army engineers. 

Maryna Beschastna, the town’s deputy mayor, claimed that girls restored to cutting their hair ‘to be less attractive’ after Kremlin troops pulled women by their hair out of their basements to be abused. 

Ivankiv was liberated on March 31, 35 days after it fell into the hands of Russian troops on February 27, just two days after the start of the war.

Meanwhile, local resident Elena Skoropad told ITV News that her 12-year-old son, who she described as a keen basketball player, was killed by shrapnel from Russian cluster munitions.  

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