UN sexual violence report exposes Russia abuse pattern

The UN sexual violence report released this week delivers one of the most damning assessments of the war in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion began. Published by the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva on September 18, the 20-page document records 1,004 cases of sexual violence committed between February 24, 2022 and the end of July 2026. Investigators attribute 89 percent of the documented cases to Russian authorities, including members of the armed forces, the prison service and the national security service. The remaining 11 percent were attributed to Ukrainian authorities.

The findings are based on confidential interviews with hundreds of victims and survivors on both sides of the conflict, along with court documents and official records, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he was deeply alarmed by the prevalence of the documented acts and warned they were almost certainly continuing amid the daily violence of the war. He described sexual violence as a grave feature of the full-scale armed attack and said it must stop immediately, regardless of who is responsible.

Survivors are mostly men held in detention

Most of the victims were men, particularly in places of detention, while women and children were affected primarily in territory occupied by Russian forces. The documented violations include gang rape, rape, genital mutilation, electric shocks and beatings to the genitals, and other degrading acts of a sexual nature. Investigators documented cases across more than 164 official and unofficial facilities, in every region of occupied Ukraine and across 25 regions of the Russian Federation.

Nearly three quarters of Ukrainian prisoners of war who survived sexual violence and almost half of detained civilians endured it more than once, the mission's head, Danielle Bell, said at a press briefing in Geneva on September 18. She said the abuse occurred throughout captivity, from capture through interrogation, in cells and showers, and even shortly before release or prisoner exchanges. Bell noted that sexual violence in conflict is often assumed to affect mainly women and girls, but in the Ukraine war most survivors are men, and men and women need different approaches to recovery.

One recurring form of abuse involved a Soviet-era military field telephone known as a "tapik." The report says 155 survivors, or 27 percent of those who endured genital torture, were subjected to electric shocks to the genitals with the device or with tasers. Individual accounts cited in the findings describe a Ukrainian prisoner of war who said he was raped with a rubber baton on multiple occasions, another who said he was penetrated with cell door keys and forced to lick them, and a civilian who said he was raped with a shovel handle. The mission described the sexual violence against prisoners of war as frequent and systematic, and said Russia had taken no discernible steps to prevent, investigate or prosecute it.

Women and children suffered in occupied areas

Civilians outside detention facilities faced violence as well, mostly women and girls in areas under Russian control. The youngest documented rape survivor was a four-year-old girl and the oldest was an 82-year-old woman, both cases attributed to Russian forces. The report says 46 women, including 10 girls, reported being raped by Russian military personnel, and three of the women later gave birth to children conceived in rape.

According to the mission's documentation, survivors told investigators about repeated assaults inside their own homes. One woman said a Russian soldier moved into her house in Zaporizhzhia and raped her several times a week for a month, promising that her detained husband would be treated better in exchange. Another woman said a soldier forced his way into her home in Kherson and raped her every night, while repeatedly threatening gang rape. A third woman described how two Russian soldiers broke into a family home in the Kyiv region in 2022, shot and killed her husband, then gang raped her while threatening to shoot her in front of her four-year-old son if she resisted.

The violence has unfolded against the backdrop of a wider escalation. Bell told reporters that more civilians had been killed and injured in the first eight months of 2026 than in all of 2025, and she said the report was meant to draw attention to a far less visible dimension of the war. The toll has risen alongside intensifying strikes across Ukraine, including Russian attacks near the Polish border that scrambled Polish and allied jets this month. The findings land as Russia's parliamentary election, which now includes balloting in territory illegally annexed from Ukraine, is drawing condemnation from Kyiv and Western governments, a development covered in MuseWire's report on the wartime vote.

Violations by Ukrainian forces and the UN's demands

The report also documents violations attributed to Ukrainian authorities against Russian and third-country prisoners of war and detainees. Nearly half of those cases involved threats of sexual violence. The rest included forced nudity, electric shocks and beatings to the genitals, electric shocks and beatings to the body while nude, sexually degrading treatment, two sexual assaults and two attempted rapes. The investigators said they did not document any cases of rape of Russian prisoners of war by Ukrainian forces.

Bell said those violations were serious and required accountability, but the pattern differed in scope and scale from the conduct of Russian forces. The UN sexual violence report notes that Ukraine allowed the monitoring mission unfettered access to its detention facilities and had cooperated with requests for information, while Russia had not engaged with the mission's requests. The report says Ukraine had taken some steps to prevent violations, though efforts to ensure accountability remained limited.

Türk called on both Russia and Ukraine to investigate all credible claims of sexual violence promptly, thoroughly and impartially, and to bring those found responsible to justice regardless of rank or affiliation. He singled out the Russian Federation in particular, given the high prevalence of cases attributed to its forces, and urged it to take concrete and discernible steps to protect civilians and prisoners of war from all forms of torture. He also renewed the long-standing UN call for Russia to immediately, completely and unconditionally cease the use of force against Ukraine and withdraw its military forces in line with the UN Charter and binding international law.