Ukrainian mum ‘repeatedly raped’ by drunken Russian troops as son sobbed nearby

The 33-year-old woman said that she was raped multiple times by two Russian soldiers who could barely stand while they held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her

A Ukrainian woman was raped multiple times at gunpoint by Russian soldiers who had killed her husband, it has been reported.

On March 9 Natalya* and her family were forced to leave their home when troops shot their dog, despite there being a white sheet hanging on the gate indicating no one at the property was a threat.

The 33-year-old said the unit’s commander, who introduced himself as Mikhail Romanov, seemed drunk and deliberately wrecked her car so she couldn’t flee.

Later that day, once the sun had gone down, she heard a single gunshot and went outside to see the body of her husband lying by the front gate, The Times reported.

“This younger guy pulled (a) gun to my head and said: ‘I shot your husband because he’s a Nazi,’” she told the paper.

As her four-year-old son hid in the boiler room, the two soldiers made Natalya take off her clothes and then raped her one after the other, it was reported.

“You’d better shut up or I’ll get your child and show him his mother’s brains spread around the house,” they said.

She added: “All the time they held the gun by my head and taunted me, saying, ‘How do you think she sucks it? Shall we kill her or keep her alive?’”

Natalya went to her son when the ordeal was over, to find him paralyzed with fear.

The troops, so drunk “they were barely able to stand”, returned 20 minutes later and raped her again before falling asleep in chairs, the Times reported.

Natalya grabbed her son and fled the house, the young boy having to walk past his dad’s body on the way out.

They have since made it to Ternopil, the Ukrainian city where other family members were already sheltering.

Natalya said her son doesn’t know what has happened to his dad and believes he is still alive and well at the home.

She takes some solace in unconfirmed reports that Romanov is thought to have been killed by Ukrainian forces in Brovary.

Over the last week Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has confirmed plans to seek justice through the International Criminal Court for reported rapes, which are recognised as a war crime.

She said that Ukraine had told Russia that an arrest warrant had been issued for the serviceman.

Ukraine’s prosecutor-general Iryna Venediktova opened the country’s first official rape investigation into the case.

Ukrainian MP Maria Mezentseva said on Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “There is one case which was very widely discussed recently because it’s been recorded and proceeded with (by) the prosecutor’s office, and we’re not going into details, but it’s quite a scary scene when a civilian was shot dead in his house in a small town next to Kyiv.

“His wife was – I’m sorry but I have to say it – raped several times in front of her underage child.”

Ms Mezentseva said cases were being underreported.

“There are many more victims rather than just this one case which has been made public by the prosecutor general,” she said.

“And of course, we are expecting many more of them, which will be public once victims will be ready to talk about that.

“That’s why you know, when we’ve been talking to Boris Johnson, when we will be talking to your Home Office, when we’ve been talking to MPs of UK, we’ve also raised this issue that this aftermath, which we are dealing with right now, the aftermath of war, has to be taken very cautiously, very seriously, and to take into account the UK experience and experience of other countries, which can help us in dealing with psychologists, and how to help these people to actually live over these cases, to keep going afterwards, to keep living.”

*Name has been changed