Tackling Sexual Violence In Russia's War Against Ukraine

With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in its 5th year, documenting and prosecuting conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in the war has become an important part of understanding the scale of psychological destruction and torture in captivity. The awareness and the vocabulary of conflict-related sexual violence has become important to the retelling of the story of war and conflict, adding an important layer of precision and honesty about the gendered experiences of conflict by both men and women. According to the United Nations, conflict-related sexual violence refers to “rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls or boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict” (United Nations Security Council, 2019, p. 3) However, CRSV is not limited to physical acts alone. It also includes the psychological harm caused by threats of sexual violence, humiliation and intimidation linked to sexual acts (United Nations Security Council, 2019). The years of evidence-gathering and research have made it clear that rather than a peripheral issue or unfortunate byproduct of war conditions, sexual violence and abuse is employed strategically, whereby a person’s gender is weaponized to inflict psychological and/or physical harm on them. Therefore, conflict-related sexual violence is increasingly recognized as gender-based torture.
This blog post focuses on this dark dimension of the Ukrainian experience of war, and highlights the efforts Ukrainian organizations are making to address it. The post brings together field notes from fieldwork conducted in November 2025 in the city of Kyiv in Ukraine, along with exploratory reflections and observations. It marks one of the first steps in the DIIS Centre for Ukraine Research’ work on civil society, women’s organisation and democratization in Ukraine. As part of the “Research on the political economy of Ukraine” project, which runs until 2029, it contributes to an understanding of state-civil society relations in the context of Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction.