January 4th 2025.
Natalia Vlasova, a mother from Ukraine, bravely shared her horrifying experience of being tortured and sexually abused by 15 Russian soldiers. This traumatic ordeal took place in 2018, four years before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Natalia recounted her harrowing story in a Russian court where she was being tried for acts of terrorism.
During her testimony, Natalia revealed that the soldiers threatened to harm her young daughter if she did not comply with their demands. Despite her courageous account and her claims of being coerced into giving a false confession, the judge sentenced her to 18 years in prison. It was reported by Human Rights in Ukraine that the judge completely disregarded Natalia's testimony and sentenced her anyway.
Natalia described her torture in detail, which included being electrocuted until she screamed loud enough to satisfy the soldiers. She explained, "If I didn't scream loudly enough, they would increase the voltage and the shocks became even more unbearable. They wanted a reaction from me." She also mentioned that the soldiers were like "maniacs" and that one of the leaders, Vasyl Yevdokimov, was a prominent figure at Izolyatsia, a notorious Russian torture prison in occupied Donetsk.
One of the charges against Natalia was plotting to kill Yevdokimov, also known as Lenin. She claimed that he was the one who filed down her teeth with a nail file and subjected her to sexual violence, including inserting a bottle into her body. Natalia also spoke about being forced to stand all night in the cold with her hands bound and being systematically raped by fifteen men at once.
The militants even threatened to harm Natalia's five-year-old daughter, Yulia, by planting a booby-trapped toy at her nursery school. Despite the overwhelming evidence of her torture and the fact that her confession was forced and later retracted, Natalia was still found guilty. She was tried alongside two other Ukrainian men, Serhiy Hruzynov and Victor Shydlovsky, who were also accused of terrorism and received lengthy prison sentences.
The trial was deemed a "legal absurdity" by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. It was clear that Natalia and the other defendants were being unfairly punished for their political views and not for any concrete evidence of terrorism. This case is just one example of the Russian soldiers' use of sexual violence as a weapon to terrorize Ukrainian communities during the war. These brutal acts are not random or individual, but rather a deliberate strategy to instill fear and control over the population.
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