Three Years After Bucha’s Liberation, Ukrainian Women Still Struggle for Justice

Halyna, a 62-year-old pensioner from Ukraine, is very attached to her house in Dmytrivka, a village close to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. She keeps her home clean and warm; Halyna loves spending her afternoons knitting vyshyvankas, traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirts, or playing with Meggy, her cat. Her door is always open for family, neighbors, friends, or strangers seeking advice. 

Home was supposed to be a safe haven for Halyna, who spent her entire life in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, where she owned a small business selling clothes. But when conflict broke out in eastern Ukraine in April 2014, a couple of months after pro-Russian gunmen took control of the Crimean peninsula, Halyna’s hometown was invaded, and she found herself in the epicenter of heavy fighting. 

“I have seen the atrocities of war, the invasion by the Russian armed forces,” Halyna told More to Her Story. “That’s why my daughter, granddaughter, and I decided to save our lives. We moved to a calmer region of Ukraine, bought a house, renovated it, and lived peacefully.” 

But Dmytrivka, where the family settled, is only eight miles away from Bucha, the Ukrainian city infamously known as the site of war crimes committed by the Russian army that shocked the world in the spring of 2022. Halyna and her relatives couldn’t have known in 2014 that their haven would become a theatre of rape, war, murder, torture, and mass killings to an extent unseen in Europe since World War II.

After the full-scale war began in 2022, Halyna, like most people her age, didn’t want to abandon her home. When her daughter and granddaughter moved west, Halyna remained in the house alone and survived under the Russian occupation.

“The war was like nothing I have seen before,” she recalled. With the few other locals who remained in the village, Halyna bore witness to heavy fighting and shelling, survived weeks of hunger and cold, and endured frequent military house inspections and death threats by the Russian troops. 

Then, two weeks before the Kyiv region was liberated by the Ukrainian army, on March 19, 2022, “came that day I want to forget,” Halyna recalled.

It was a cold winter morning, and Halyna could sense something wasn’t right. Peering outside through her window blinds, she saw two young soldiers approaching her house. 

“One stayed outside, but the other walked in,” she said. He forcefully entered the house and inspected the rooms. Then, he pointed his gun at Halyna. “Get undressed, granny!” he shouted. 

“His eyes had this strange expression of pleasure, as though he felt proud that he could do whatever he pleased to an old person,” Halyna said. She had no choice but to obey.

Halyna said the soldier hit her with his machine gun and forced her to take off her remaining clothes. Then, he chased her outside and ordered her to march around the house.

“I didn’t even realize it was freezing outside; that’s how frightened I was,” said Halyna. “I begged him not to kill me. And he yelled over and over again: “Shut your mouth, or I will murder you.”

The soldier dragged Halyna into a room that used to be her granddaughter’s room and threw her on the floor; then, he grabbed her legs and raped her with his machine gun.

“He continued to rape me in the most cruel ways imaginable,” Halyna recalled. “And his eyes were filled with perverse joy.”

The violence lasted for what seemed an eternity.

“I screamed, and he kept shouting, ‘Shut up or I will kill you,’” Halyna said. “Once it was over, he put on his trousers and said: ‘Don’t even think about going outside again; I will kill you right away.’”

In the days following the assault, Halyna was bleeding heavily and had a high fever. But in the war-engulfed village, she had no access to medications or a doctor. 

So, her health deteriorated. She didn’t know it then, but it would take her months to heal from the injuries. “I just prayed to God to give me death,” Halyna told More to Her Story.

According to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin, nine thousand war crimes were committed by Russian troops in Bucha in 2022, but as of March 2025, 34 officers have been charged. 

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale military aggression in Ukraine, prosecutors have recorded 225 incidents of conflict-related sexual violence against civilian women, according to Anna Sosonska, Head of the Specialized Department of Prosecution of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Crimes at the Prosecutor’s General Office in Ukraine. But in reality, the incidents of sexual violence can be in the “thousands and thousands,” Sosonska told More to Her Story. “Few survivors want to report and submit to law enforcement agencies because of the stigmatization and misunderstanding of conflict-related sexual violence, and we don’t want to put pressure on [survivors].”

The Prosecutor’s General Office of Ukraine reported in April that all cases of conflict-related sexual violence were prosecuted in absentia, meaning that none of the perpetrators had appeared in court. 

Although the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded on March 11 that rape had been used as a form of torture against women throughout the war, especially in places of captivity, many survivors of rape like Halyna feel as though there is little hope that their rapists will ever face justice. 

“I gave the dirty bed sheets from my granddaughter’s room to Ukrainian investigators as evidence,” Halyna told More to Her Story. “But nothing has happened.”

That’s why Halyna joined SEMA Ukraine, an NGO for survivors of rape, where she regularly recounts her story to journalists, appears in documentary films, and advocates for victims’ rights. Since its founding in 2019, SEMA Ukraine has gathered more than 60 women survivors of wartime rape in Ukraine who continue to share their stories.

“We help each other, care for each other, and mainly become the voice of the women, men, and children who cannot share their stories because they’ve been tortured and killed by the Russian army,” she told More to Her Story.

Tetiana, 61, is another survivor of wartime rape who lives in a small town near the city of Kherson. She, too, decided to become a voice for rape victims in Ukraine.

Shortly after the Russian troops swept into Kherson on February 24, 2022, the army spread across the region. In March 2022, when Tetiana’s city was occupied, she noticed four soldiers who frequently came to her house and stole her food.

One of the soldiers started following her, often making sexual comments or threats. One day, as he forcefully entered Tetiana’s home, he spat: “Agree to this the nice way, or you’ll be sorry, bitch!”

For a week, Tetiana didn’t feel safe in her own house. 

One day, Russian soldiers began firing guns into her home. Tetiana was certain they had killed her husband; when she came out of her room, two soldiers lunged toward her, tore her clothes off, and one of them raped her. 

“I remember a strange gesture: the soldier who raped me ripped my shirt off my body and stuffed it inside his bullet-proof vest,” she said.

The two soldiers then dragged Tetiana into her room so violently that her elbows were rubbed raw from sliding against the floor. They threw her on the bed, and the same soldier raped her a second time while his comrade watched. 

“Shortly thereafter, airstrikes started,” Tetiana recalled. “They ran away.”

Today, Tetiana speaks about her abuse despite facing enormous risks. 

Thanks to EMDR, a specialized eye-desensitization therapy for trauma survivors, and group therapy sessions – provided by SEMA Ukraine – Tetiana feels better. 

But as the news of Russian President Vladimir Putin organizing the biggest military call-up in years was broken last week, many rape victims in Ukraine feel crushed and fear for their safety. This is most prevalent in regions such as the Kherson oblast, where reports indicate that the Russian army is trying to seize again. On April 2, the Russian president indicated he had called up to 160,000 young men to join the Russian armed forces.

“We know victims often don’t report conflict-related sexual violence due to fear of Russian troops [returning to punish them,]” said Anastasiia Moiseieva, Deputy Lead of Sexual and Gender-based Violence Mobile Justice Team at Global Rights Compliance.

This is why official numbers may not reflect the reality of rape cases in this war. Moiseieva explained that many victims lack clear and safe access to Ukrainian authorities, as some live in occupied territories and thousands are detained by Russian forces, while many more who can report don't because they are still processing their traumas.

Moiseieva believes the gross extent of sexual violence seen in this conflict is not random.

“We see signs that Russia may be using sexual violence as a method of suppressing the active Ukrainian population in occupied territories, Moiseieva told More to Her Story. 

Among seven other rape survivors interviewed for this story, two reported being victims of electrocution of the genitals, and three being victims of gang rape or witnessing other women being raped. Another woman from Kherson told More to Her Story she was forced to watch her son being electrocuted, including in the genital area.

Amid such violence, many Ukrainian women who are survivors of violence understand the power of their stories — and are using them as weapons against their perpetrators. 

“We decided to talk about it — for the whole world to know,” Halyna told More to Her Story. “We didn’t attack anyone. Russia came to destroy us. I have only one wish: that Russia doesn’t suppress us entirely.”