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A Ukrainian woman was allegedly kept as a sex slave by a Russian soldier who raped her for more than a year — before she finally managed to escape and identify her alleged captor, according to reports.
The nightmare began for the woman — identified by the Times of London only as Sofia — when she was snatched from her home in a Village near Kharkiv shortly after Russian invaded the country in February 2022.
Sofia, just 21 at the time, claimed she rejected repeated advances from Russian soldier Vyacheslav Dubenko while he and his comrades occupied the village.
But the situation spiraled out of control when he showed up at her house armed and flanked by two soldiers and said, “Do you want your family to be dead?”
Dubenko, now 32, then allegedly took Sofia to a nearby building and raped her.
She was allegedly assaulted several more times, and when her family reported it to the occupiers’ commanding officer he reportedly dismissed it, saying “The young will be young,” and did nothing to stop it.
Things escalated again in June when Dubenko allegedly convinced a pair of fellow soldiers to kidnap Sofia, taking her across the border in to the Russian city of Belogrod and locking her in a “boarded up” apartment, the Times of London reported.
“The balcony had metal bars,” said Anna Ponomarenko, a top war crime investigator for Kharkiv police.
“Everything was boarded up. The doors were locked with both keys and padlocks,” she told the Times. “He took away her phone. He left her food, that’s it. It was sex slavery.”
For over a year Sofia was held captive in the apartment and repeatedly raped by Dubenko — who only allowed her outside by night to sit with him on a nearby bench, Ponomarenko alleged.
During such times he would threaten to go back in Kharkiv and murder Sofia’s family if she refused to have sex with him or ever tried to escape.
Sofia — cut off from the outside world and having no idea that her village had been liberated — complied and submitted to the torture, which became so bad that she tried to kill herself in January 2023, the Times reported.
Even when she made it to the hospital and tried to tell doctors what was happening, they refused to believe her and Dubenko would deny her claims.
“Whenever she would tell doctors or locals what was happening, he would say, ‘She’s from Ukraine. She’s disturbed. Why are you listening to her,’” investigator Ponomarenko said.
Sofia only managed to escape after Dubenko himself became a prisoner.
Sometime in September 2023, Russian police showed up at Dubenko’s apartment and hauled him away for desertion. He had reportedly been pocketing his military pay while telling his family he was at the front, but never showed up for duty.
Left alone in the apartment after Dubenko’s sudden arrest, Sofia found his phone and dialed her sister who was living in Poland. The sister then managed to contact a volunteer network embedded within Russia who helped smuggle Sofia to the Ukrainian border.
Sofia then simply walked across the border, where family fighting in the Ukrainian army met her, and she was rushed to safety.
Her case is just one of at least 226 similar allegations of sex crimes by Russians against Ukrainians being investigated by local police — but officials suspect the true scope of the atrocities is considerably greater.
Of those cases, only a single suspect has been arrested.
Sergey Karpilovic — a 51-year-old longtime convict who agreed to fight in the war to get out of prison — was captured in the Donetsk region in December. He was found with a 58-year-old Ukrainian woman who accused him of raping her since last August.
Karpilovic denied the allegations — claiming he and the woman were in a consensual relationship — and remains in pre-trial custody, but could be sent back to Russia as part of a prisoner swap.
English (US)