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Cases of sexual violence by Azov militants recorded by Russia — diplomat

According to Vasily Nebenzya, such incidents have been registered since 2014 by representatives of various UN structures but were not reflected in the report of the UN secretary general’s special rapporteur

UNITED NATIONS, July 14. /TASS/. A number of cases of sexual violence committed by Ukrainian militants were recorded by Russian investigators after the liberation of territories in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said on Friday.

According to the Russian diplomat, such incidents have been reported since the beginning of hostilities in Donbass in 2014. "Thus, a DPR woman said that after she had been abducted in the night to January 19, 2015 and thrown into a cell in the SBU (Ukrainian Security Service - TASS) in Kramatorsk, she was beaten, raped and tortured. SBU officers threatened to do the same to her underage daughter," he said.

"A woman from Mariupol recalled how militants from the Azov regiment - the one whose commanders [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky recently hugged on camera - raped women who showed sympathy for Russia and poured mounting foam, pardon me, into their internal genital organs," he said. "In a period from March 17 to 23, 2015, neo-Nazis from the Tornado battalion arranged a torture room in the basement of a school building in Lisichansk, where they raped and tortured local women, including old women, and minors."

According to Nebenzya, such incidents have been registered since 2014 by representatives of various UN structures but were not reflected in the report of the UN secretary general’s special rapporteur.

"We would like to recall that the monitoring mission of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Ukraine and other international institutes published reports about numerous crimes committed by Ukrainian militants: beatings, electric shock torture, threats and sexual violence against those they suspect of sympathizing with the DPR and LPR authorities. But this information was not condemned in reports on sexual violence in conflict," he added.