Carpatho-Maxyn

"Before he left for the front line in 2022, Serhii Boychuk told his wife that if captured, he didn’t want to be taken alive. A few months later, the Russians took him prisoner. Guards beat and tortured him sexually for more than two years, he said. He recounted being raped with bottles and sticks, and having a knife pressed against his genitals. He still finds it difficult to walk. 'They wanted to psychologically break me,' said Boychuk, now 33. Other Ukrainian former detainees described similar experiences of sexualized torture while in Russian prisoner-of-war camps. Their accounts match the findings of Ukrainian prosecutors and intelligence services and United Nations investigators, who have conducted extensive interviews with former prisoners—both soldiers and civilians—throughout the more than four-year war. This growing body of testimony suggests that Russian sexual violence against POWs and civilian prisoners has been systematic—and condoned, even encouraged, by senior Russian officials... Other former POWs and civilian detainees who spoke to the Journal said they were forced to stand, crouch or parade naked. Some had their genitals electrocuted. Some were raped—either with objects such as bottles or sticks, or by Russian guards. Some of the former detainees, who were held at various sites in Russia, recalled guards telling them that they would stop Ukrainians from having children." @macdonaldajm Serhii Bosak and Ievgeniia Sivorka wsj.com/world/russia-ukraine…