‘No One to Talk To’: The Lingering Trauma of Russian Rape in Ukraine

After Daria fled from her Russian-occupied village to western Ukraine, she spent weeks restlessly wandering the streets. Whenever she grew tired of walking, she would sit on park benches and tell anyone who would listen — even perfect strangers — what the Russian soldiers did to her.

“I wanted to tell everyone, but there was no one to talk to,” recalled Daria, a 32-year-old illustrator. “I could not confide in my family members, and I did not know anyone in town. I had to somehow deal with it on my own.”

Daria said Russian soldiers raped her twice in March 2022 in Havronshchyna — a small village about 30 miles from Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital — where a range of alleged war crimes, including sexual violence, have been documented by Ukrainian authorities and international media.

For two years after the assault, Daria said, she wrestled with shame. She could not tell her father what happened, and she struggled to be intimate with her partner. She said in an interview that she was ready to tell her story, to erase the stigma of sexual assault and help herself and other victims heal.

Her plight resonates with many other Ukrainians. Behind the battlefields of Europe’s largest war in 80 years, the authorities and aid groups say, there are thousands of women, men and children who have been sexually assaulted by Russian soldiers and have been struggling to piece their lives back together.

Ukraine’s government, despite facing one of the toughest moments since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 with almost nonexistent battlefield progress, has made significant efforts to document and prosecute sexual violence cases.