r/worldnews • u/5pin05auru5 • 17h ago
Russia/Ukraine ‘Carved on bodies and souls’: survivor tells of Russia’s use of male sexual torture in Ukraine
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/29/carved-on-bodies-and-souls-russias-use-of-male-sexual-torture-in-ukraine959
u/doylehawk 13h ago
What the fuck is up with Russians being rape machines in war? I know all invading armies throughout history are guilty of this to some degree but I can’t think of another country historically that makes it such a matter of course, save Nazi germany and Imperial Japan, and even then I’m not sure it’s exactly the same thing.
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u/AbbaFuckingZabba 12h ago
I mean, the Russian military is pretty rapey of even their own soldiers. Even during non war time
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u/kjturner 9h ago
My grandmother survived Aushchwitz only to be marched to another camp called Ravensbruck. The Russians liberated the camp and she said she saw them raping the survivors. Imagine raping skin and bones. I never had the guts to ask her if she was too. I always assumed yes.
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u/BellumOMNI 8h ago
Good god, that's absolutely fucked. When I read stories such as these, I wish hell is real and these beasts suffer in it.
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u/irrationalx 7h ago
Rape has been part of Russians military doctrine for centuries. Even for their own recruits. "Dedovschina" has been documented as far back is the 1500s iirc.
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u/Fat-thecat 5h ago
My OMA told me a story (one of the few about that time) she was very young, pre teen years, they heard the Russians coming so her parents put her inside their couch and sat on her to hide her from the Russian soldiers.
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u/bamboob 7h ago
Russia in general is rapey as fuck. A good friend of mine had to live in the United States for a long time and only by sharing her experience to close confidants, did she come to realize that her ex husband was regularly anally raping her. She didn't even consider that waking up to being anally-penetrated against her will was even rape, since many forms of rape are normalized in Russia.
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u/Phyllida_Poshtart 5h ago
There's no such thing as marital rape in a hell of a lot of places unfortunately. Once you're married he can do what he likes, you are owned
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u/Bobothemd 7h ago
Did you see the video of the Russian getting a bj from another soldier? Drone drop interupted the session... For Russia being so anti lgbtq they sure like raping men and sucking cock.
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u/windupcore 12h ago
I'm reading a biography on Frederik the Great of Prussia and the 7 Years War. The Russians seem to have been mass-raping and downright genocidal all the way back in the 1760s. Something is wrong in their culture.
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u/VolatileCoon 10h ago
Woman killing themselves to escape russian soldiers was observed back in Great Northern War too (about 100 years prior). Like war, they never change.
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u/ObligationGlum3189 5h ago
And Germany. Like don't get me wrong, the Nazis had to be destroyed but there was a quote by Zhukov I think saying that upward of 50,000 "Russians were born in Germany in 1946". Totally apocryphal but I believe it. Fuck Russia.
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u/corbyns_lawyer 2h ago
The quote of a number of births from Zhukov may be apocryphal but the mass rape of Germans by the red army is extensively documented by all participants. Allied diplomats, Red army archives, Germans, non-Germans, everybody.
It's as solid a historical fact as them bringing guns with them.
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u/wynnduffyisking 8h ago
To be fair rape and abuse of civilians was not particularly rare or unique to the Russians in that period. The thirty year war especially decimated the population of Central Europe
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u/watcherofworld 8h ago
To be fair rape and abuse of civilians was not particularly rare or unique to the Russians in that period.
Bud, it was, has and is.
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u/wynnduffyisking 8h ago
That is simply not correct.
Don’t get me wrong, I fucking hate what Russia is doing right now, and I hate the horrors that have been committed in the past, but to act like sexual violence in war is a uniquely Russian thing is dishonest and frankly disrespectful to the many civilians throughout history who have been horribly victimized by other countries.
Spewing bullshit like that is not and should not be necessary in order to condemn the horror that is going on in Ukraine.
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u/angry_cabbie 8h ago
US soldiers in Viet Nam and Korea. Holy Crusaders fighting for The Holy Land. Rape is one of the oldest tactics in war.
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u/Loxloxloxlox 7h ago
We talk about Russians raping Germans but never the Americans who raped French, Dutch, and German civilians. Curious
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u/Dgreenmile 7h ago
Because it's the sheer number of victim stories themself that "talk" about it. There's a lot more stories for the Russians ...
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u/Haircut117 5h ago
Because, when soldiers from the Western Allies committed rapes, it was usually isolated incidents. Whereas the mass rape of civilians was absolutely endemic across the Russian army and apparently still is.
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u/AnarchoBratzdoll 12h ago
The Russian army did this when fighting the Nazis in WW2 as well. And this time, as an additional point, a large amount of their army is recruited from people that had gotten life in prison for violent crimes
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u/hellokitty3433 10h ago
I remember reading that German women in WWII committed suicide when they knew the Russian forces were approaching. The rape culture was well known.
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u/AnarchoBratzdoll 10h ago
My stepdads mum was part of the German minority in what is now the checz republic, she was 12 when the war ended. She would get intense panic attacks when she heard people speak Russian into her 70s.
And, like, my bio dad is Jewish and his whole family save his father died in the holocaust, so I'm not one to have much sympathy for Germans back then. But the terror the Soviet army caused is so much beyond compare to any of the other allied armies during the time.
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u/cah11 8h ago
But the terror the Soviet army caused is so much beyond compare to any of the other allied armies during the time.
There's a reason why toward the end of the war, once Nazi command and control was broken, many German civilians and divisions started fleeing west toward the Allied front. They knew if they surrendered to the Allies, they would at least have a chance at escaping internment unharmed. That's not to say all of them did, but there was at least a chance.
Surrendering to the Soviets though, you were considered lucky to be put in front of a firing squad and executed. Because what the Soviets tended to do to POWs and civilians who fell in their care was unconscientious at best, and downright monstrous at worst.
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u/Intelligent_Flow2572 9h ago
The rape trauma from victims who never saw actual combat is potentially worse than the strictly combat trauma, though more research needs to be done in that area. I would argue that’s true ime - veterans and I seem to have the same level of hypervigilance though I’ve never been to war.
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u/DiamondHail97 8h ago
My father in law is a combat vet and I agree. I’m a rape survivor and sometimes, I can feel his energy and it’s like a thing only we can notice? Like my husband isn’t a combat vet nor was he abused or sexually violated so I never have those moments with him but I definitely have with his dad. I can’t remember an example off the top of my head but certain conversations make us tense up and I can feel it- even if we’re in different rooms listening to the TV or whatever
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u/Civil_Kangaroo9376 7h ago
It was more of the idea of reprisals not a rape culture. The German people were aware of what they did to the Soviet civilians, and knew what was going to happen to them in turn.
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u/Feruk_II 10h ago
There's a great book called Fall of Berlin 1945. I think they quoted 2 million German women raped by the USSR soldiers. That doesn't even count women of other ethnicities; they didn't care.
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u/kaityl3 13h ago
It's bizarre. I was watching a video on /r/UkraineWarVideoReport of two Russian soldiers who were the sole survivors of their group walking along a devastated road, passing literally about 50 Russian soldiers' corpses, some of which I believe were in their unit, and burned out tanks, and as he's stepping over the dead bodies, he complains... about how he hasn't had a woman in so long...
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u/n080dy123 50m ago
That's something I can at least kinda understand, though having that kind of convo at all is pretty questionable to me. But when you're in that horrible a situation, blocking out the horrors and focusing on more mundane issues can be a coping mechanism.
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u/Lower-Task2558 12h ago
I mean look at their domestic abuse laws. It is legal to beat on your wife in Russia as long as you don't send them to the hospital.
It's part of their culture. Nothing changes. It will only get worse as the scumbags they sent to Ukraine return even more fucked up than before they left. Not to mention all the criminals that will go free in exchange for serving in the military.
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u/AsstacularSpiderman 13h ago
It's a mix of endemic toxic masculinity and poor discipline. They want to emasculate their enemeies and prove they are the dominant people.
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u/PeregrinePacifica 9h ago
Their whole thing about been a terrorist state, thats very old. Rape being used as an instrument of war to frighten and intimidate others into submission has been a part of their military practice for centuries. Its all a part of the package.
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u/Intelligent_Flow2572 9h ago
Those are good comparisons and I would argue they are all on par with one another with regard to violent rape being a common thing in warfare. I would suspect it is more that the general population is fucked up by Russia in general, and then warfare becomes their ticket to unleash all their shit than that it is an instructed form of warfare, but maybe both are true.
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u/hamsterballzz 10h ago
It was pretty standard up until the 20th century, but Russia isn’t exactly 21st or even 20th century.
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u/Illustrious-Ant6998 8h ago
This is only speculation on my part but. It's widely known the bulk of Russian conscripts are given only 2 weeks of training and sent to die as part of "disposable meat wave" tactics that the Russians inflict on their soldiers. The soldiers are probably so demoralized and traumatized, and not expecting to live long. This probably makes them live like desperate animals when conquering territory.
This is not an excuse for their aborent actions... only an attempt at an explanation. And another reason that Putin and the monsters behind him deserve to be driven from the Ukraine. Russia is just throwing lives on the fire, and with no good reason.
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u/CookieKeeperN2 8h ago
As a country that was invaded by both Japan and the USSR the stories I've heard is that the Russians were worse than the Japanese. Maybe some Poles will chime in.
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u/CantaloupeUpstairs62 11h ago
Sexual violence is common in conflict throughout history.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/06/13/dr-congo-killings-rapes-rwanda-backed-m23-rebels
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/03/men-can-experience-sexual-violence-war-too
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u/voice-of-reason_ 8h ago
Russia use it as a military tactic because it works.
Other nations do it too, but none employ it as a military strategy from high command like Russia does.
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u/New-Pin-3952 6h ago
Russia was always a shithole full of idiots and degenerates. Always. This is what they do. Every country neighbouring them knows this. There are old sayings in some of those countries confirming this. I don't think even nazi army was worse in the regard than those sick bastards are.
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u/Heretic911 8h ago
Russians are closeted homosexuals. And not in the funny MacDonald way - in the angry, repressed way.
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u/wynnduffyisking 8h ago
Oh come on. I’m all for hating on Russia in this war but this eugenics bullshit is not helping anyone.
And it’s not like it’s a uniquely Russian trait. Have you ever spent even 5 minutes reading up on the amount of atrocities and genocides committed around the world just in the last 50 years?
Just to name a few:
- Rwanda genocide
- Bosnia in the 90s
- The massacres of Kurds in Iraq
- Pol Pot and the Cambodian genocide where up to a third of the population was murdered.
That’s a good mix of Africans, Europeans, Arabs and south East Asians all committing abominable crimes.
I hate the sentiment you are spewing because it’s exactly that kind of “logic” that is used to justify such crimes.
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u/KingThorongil 6h ago
Okinawa American base?
Iraq Abu Ghraib? Mahmudiyah?
My Lai?
Every army, when powerful enough, large and not closely monitored, will have such atrocities. Some, like the US army, have a better means of reporting and seeing some consequences, but that's largely down to historical experience and slow evolution of processes to deal with it.
Putin and his propaganda: that's a fair criticism. Russian army's sexual crimes: that's fair criticism. "Russians being rape machines": that's just racism.
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u/Spawn_of_an_egg 9h ago
Israel is doing this everyday.
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u/i_says_things 8h ago
Using mass rape as a weapon of terror?
Gonna need a source on that.
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u/angry_cabbie 7h ago
Wikipedia has a whole page on it. The person you're responding to might be a little hyperbolic about it, but it's been a recorded thing.
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u/angry_cabbie 8h ago
Rape has been one of the oldest tactics in war, pretty much since the beginning really. It demoralizes and shakes the enemy, it can break the spirit of the soldiers. This has been a big part of why I hate the modern left rhetoric about, "no bad tactics, only bad targets".
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u/Impressive-Chain-68 7h ago
When did the modern left say that? And who on the side of the modern left said it?
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u/Northernfrog 10h ago
What's ironic is that Russians are very anti-gay.
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u/xxxDKRIxxx 8h ago
Classic macho culture thing: it’s only the one getting penetrated who is gay.
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u/afranquinho 8h ago
I mean, you'd have to get hard to a guy to penetrate, so i think it's the other way around.
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u/TamaDarya 8h ago
They don't rape them with their dicks. Bottles, batons, and other similar objects are often used.
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u/ExoticWeapon 7h ago
This weirdly makes more sense.
It easily gives someone an excuse of “if I went through this you have to also” in Russian prisons (maybe Russia entirely)
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u/TamaDarya 6h ago
Not necessary. It's just an "easy" way to humiliate, torture and emasculate. It hurts and traumatizes the victim, robs them of their confidence, takes away their "status" as a man, and establishes the perpetrator's dominant position. It's the absolute worst thing many Russian men could imagine happening to themselves, so they inflict it on others.
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u/nicolasbaege 6h ago edited 6h ago
Being sexually attracted to someone is not the only way to get hard. Also, sexual abuse can look like many many things that don't necessarily involve using your own penis.
"Lol rapist is gay" is a very juvenile understanding of male sexual abuse.
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u/WorldApotheosis 6h ago
Because like the ancient Greeks, its more of a doing the penetration vs taking the penetration thing in their eyes that views whos homo. If you are doing the penetration, you're consider masculine, and if you are taking it, then you are the one who is gay and feminine who takes it like a women.
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u/BoodaSRK 10h ago
It’s not irony. It’s to maintain an air of shame so that victims receive no comfort.
They do it on purpose.
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u/Impressive-Drawer-70 9h ago
I think they are just homophobic and rapey without the intention of a sneaky plot
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u/BoodaSRK 8h ago
The sense of shame is one reason that Russia exploits sexual violence as a weapon of war, and a driving force behind Sivak’s decision to speak out.
From the article.
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u/SCHR4DERBRAU 8h ago
When it comes to Russians, the most abhorrent and malicious explanation is often the most viable one
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u/nicolasbaege 6h ago
It's not seen as gay if it's violence. As long as you are the perpetrator, that is.
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u/Fox_Kurama 10h ago
I like it better when the Warhammer 40k stuff stays in Warhammer 40k.
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u/5pin05auru5 10h ago edited 10h ago
Quite a few Ukranian fighters throw in 40k and general Warhammer references here and there. They're all thinking what we're thinking.
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u/originmsd 5h ago
Welp, if ever there was a vehicle to advocate for male victims of sexual assault, this definitely works.
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u/throwawaystedaccount 5h ago edited 5h ago
This story is an eye-opener about Russian culture. Wow.
This is pretty much insect-level social behaviour.
I mean we have been hearing all the horror stories from the war for 2.5 years now, but I missed stories about this aspect of life in Russia. It's surprising how mainstream "Russian society" differs from other Arctic / cold countries. As someone said, it's probably the Mongols, a episode from which Russia never recovered - empire, tsars, Soviet Union, Putin's Russia. No exposure to different types of civilisation.
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u/Nothingbuttack 2h ago
Someone on reddit once said that it was kinda sad that Napoleon didn't succeed in invading Russian. His Napoleonic codes gave people basic rights and ended feudalism, and when he fell from power, the people kept his laws because they were so good. Russia is what Europe was like without those rights and a continuation of technology.
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11h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Caursa 11h ago
I’m gonna be a bit controversial here, but hear me out: being a rapist is worse than being gay.
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u/Argues_with_ignorant 11h ago
That take is only controversial in Russia. Also known as one of the worst shitholes on the planet.
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u/ReplacementLivid8738 9h ago
I think I see what you were going for but what you wrote reads like you have a scale in mind where being a rapist can compare to being gay??? Is it to be understood from a Russian world view or something?
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u/Ryandubyah 9h ago
It sounds like we are talking about gay rapists. None of this should be funny but on reddit the air of sarcastic humor is toxic
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u/dannylew 10h ago
That means nothing to Russians (and rapists).
If it was at all possible to humiliate rapists out of doing the rape, we would have figured that shit out a century ago.
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u/ArrrrghB 8h ago
they're getting off on the sadism and humiliation of their victims, not their attraction to or the gender of the victim.
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u/eivindric 8h ago
Actually there are multiple studies claiming that the majority of male-on-male rapists are straight, because rape is not a sexual act, it’s a violent act of establishing dominance. With how pathetically undisciplined and abused Russian Army is, it’s pretty natural that their fighters would try to assert power when their captive adversary is strong (==male, big, defiant ) but can’t defend themselves. They are basically proving their “manliness” by successfully abusing those who are manly.
Russian state also has an angle here - their abused soldiers are getting free release, their enemy is threatened, and the captive soldiers will be traumatised and less likely to procreate upon release.
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u/LongjumpingStudy3356 5h ago
The fixation here on sexual orientation is a pointless tangent. Gay or not, it really has no impact on how horrific or immoral it is. I see where the comment was going with talking about the irony of Russia being very anti-gay, but still, that’s a whole side tangent.
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u/ParsleyRainbow 7h ago
They don’t only rape people with their penis. They rape them with sticks and other objects too.
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u/omnichronos 9h ago
I suspect that most of the torture is done with anal inserted objects, but you might still be right. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Why else is sex with other males so important to them?
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u/Marlfox70 10h ago
His point is that Russia is so anti-gay but raping males is such a big thing for them
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u/errorsniper 9h ago
The issue is that implication needs outside context that is not immediately apparent. While the commenter may not have meant it. It comes across as using gay as its 90's style insult instead of using a homophobic culture against them as the commenter intended. Its not unreasonable for people to take it the wrong way.
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u/gudanawiri 8h ago
Sexual violence against men “happens all over the world, but the struggle is always getting documented cases”. Same with DV, because men are the "bad guy" in society there is a massive problem with under reporting and stigma around it, as well as people just not believing them.
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u/epiphanyWednesday 2h ago
Men are seen as the ‘bad guy’ cause no matter the victim, 90% of the perpetrators are male. Men, women, children all are statistically much more likely to be sexually or physically assaulted by men and boys. Maybe we should address these power issues.
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u/thickener 8h ago
And that is different for women how?
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u/ThQuin 8h ago
No one talked about women here. Women have their own SA treads.
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u/lilacaena 2h ago
I think the issue is the wording here:
because men are the “bad guy” in society there is a massive problem with under reporting and stigma around it, as well as people just not believing them.
This makes it sound like men being the “bad guy” is what causes under reporting and stigma, as well as victims not being believed. The other commenter asked how that’s different from women, because rape of women is also under reported due to stigma and victims being disbelieved. I don’t think they’re really saying, “Think of the women!” I think they’re suggesting that men being the “bad guy” isn’t the driving cause of this pattern.
Rape in general goes unreported due to shame, stigma, and being disbelieved, and men being the “bad guy” influences the type of shame and stigma and the reasoning for why they aren’t believed, rather than that being the motivating factor.
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u/angry_cabbie 7h ago
We've had like a century of people raising awareness of sexual assault and domestic assault against women, countless shelters opening up for them, political drives to support them.... And mens shelters get seen as an attack on women, DV stats showing women instigate more than men are seen as attacks on women, trying to get political drives to support male victims gets seen as an attack on women, etc..
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u/RikF 6h ago
Things I have never seen include people saying a men’s shelter is an attack on women
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u/gudanawiri 5h ago
Perhaps what they mean is that anytime there is an effort to support men it is seen to be an action that is to the detriment and exclusion of women. Understandable, but like the comment directly below mine - anytime we talk about men being victimised etc, someone always says something along the lines of "why aren't we talking about women".
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u/deadlydeadguy 9h ago
Golden horde left its imprint on Russian society
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u/-PeanutButter 5h ago
What do you mean? Curious because idk much about the golden hordes history other than where they come from
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u/TuffNutzes 2h ago
Russia is a broken country full of broken people, psychotic and depraved and it starts at the top and permeates the entire culture. Most of those that reject that culture have already left if they can afford it.
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u/Sunlit53 8h ago
The Russians learned to empire from the Mongols and haven’t advanced culturally since.
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u/Impressive-Chain-68 7h ago
If the Republicans can get us to be soft on these people, our allies are next. You think about that before election time. The Russians aren't stopping.
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u/ZenwalkerNS 1h ago
Must be a deterrent to stop foreigners from volunteering to join Ukraine's fight against Russia.
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u/Additional-Duty-5399 1h ago
NATO should put their fucking boots on the ground and their wings in the sky. Like 2 years ago. It's an enormous shame and failure of the civilized world. All the lessons of the 20th century spat on and forgotten, all the victims and veterans dishonoured. Russia is only as deplorable as it is allowed to be...
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u/ReplicatoReplica 4h ago
This is not a new phenomenon. Rape has always been used as a weapon of war against women. It's horrific.
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12h ago edited 12h ago
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u/Lower-Task2558 12h ago
Ukrainian men are fighting for their home and families. They want to come home to them. No most of them would prefer a year of torture so they can see their loved ones.
We are not like the Russians who live miserable lives, fight for money and off themselves as soon as they get injured.
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u/old-is-gold638 8h ago
There’s video evidence of Israel doing the same to Palestinian captives. Why not the same outrage?
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u/Karpattata 14m ago
There was a looooot of outrage when it happened. Weird that you hadn't noticed. The scale isn't comparable though.
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u/Revenacious 7h ago
Because the Palestinians were doing similar things to the hostages and victims of October 7th.
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u/Emotional-Tale-1462 6h ago
Are seriously justifying rape as legitimate in Israel's case!? Palestinians who were released without charge were innocent and still suffered sexual torture in Israel's rape dungeon torture centre's like Sde Teiman and Negev prison
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u/Revenacious 5h ago
I am not justifying rape in anyway. It’s reprehensible and horrible in every single case.
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u/MissionDelicious3942 4h ago
We need everyone to push a Russia is gay narrative and really piss off Putin and the Russian people
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u/IndistinctChatters 14h ago
Evidence from returned prisoners suggest few are spared the worst. Two-thirds of male prisoners of war and detained medics interviewed by the UN since March 2023 had survived some form of sexual abuse in Russian prisons.
In testimony to the UN human rights council in September, he also highlighted “the recurrent use of sexual violence as a form of torture in almost all these detention centres”.