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It was mid-March and 16-year-old Dasha was about six months pregnant.
One of the soldiers, who Dasha said was drunk, began asking how many rooms were in the house, and the ages of the children.
What followed is an incident that Ukrainian prosecutors say is a war crime.
While the unrestrained violence around Kyiv has embodied the pointless savagery of Russia’s onslaught against civilians, dark and untold stories of their brutality in tiny, distant villages, like Dasha’s, in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, are slowly emerging.
Those stories are helping to paint a pattern of a Russian military, pockmarked by criminal behavior and, in this case, the alleged assault of a minor at her most vulnerable.
Dasha said that when the children, a 12 and 14-year-old girl, saw the soldiers in their kitchen, they were frightened.
“First, he (the drunk soldier) called my mother into another room. He let her go quickly. Then he called for me,” she said.
“When I came in, he first told me how he saved two people in our village — a mother with two children,” she said.
But then the soldier, who Dasha later learned was from Donetsk and called “Blue” by other soldiers, became violent.
“He started to shout, first telling me to undress. I told him that I will not, and (he) started shouting at me. And he said that if do not undress he will kill me,” she told CNN.
At that point, the other soldier entered the room and warned Blue that he would have trouble with the rest of the unit if he pursued his apparent plan.
Blue seemed unbothered by the warning, Dasha said, and his colleague left, telling him only to return to the unit in 30 minutes.
“When I resisted, he strangled me and said he’ll kill me. Then he issued an unimaginable threat, she said, telling her, “Either you sleep with me now, or I will bring 20 more people.”
Dasha’s story was interrupted by her sobbing. Her mother sat near her as she spoke, also visibly distressed.
“I just remember that he had blue eyes, and it was dark there, and I did…
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Source : cnn
