Ukrainian investigators and prosecutors are investigating hundreds of cases of sexualized violence against Russians. They are using the practice of international tribunals — and hereʼs what it looks like

Second half of the 1940s: Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals (unsuccessfully) attempt to punish sexualized violence during wartime

After World War II, the Nuremberg Tribunal did not issue a single conviction for sexualized violence, and it is not even mentioned in the Tribunalʼs judgment, although prosecutors presented evidence of mass rape by German soldiers in France and the former USSR. During the Tokyo Tribunal, prosecutors attempted to raise charges of sexualized violence in the Nanjing Massacre case. The tribunal found that Japanese soldiers committed approximately 20 000 rapes during the first month of occupation of Nanjing. However, there were no convictions for sexualized violence, as such acts were not listed as crimes in the Tribunalʼs Statute.

The tribunals showed that civilians needed greater protection. The Geneva Convention, which prohibited sexualized violence in conflict, was not signed until 1949.

The 1900s and 2000s: The International Tribunal for Yugoslavia Tries Sexualized Violence as a War Crime and a Crime Against Humanity

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was the first in history to convict people of rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity, and it began to shape jurisprudence on sexualized violence in armed conflict.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there were two types of systemic sexualized violence. The first was torture in concentration camps, where both women and men were victims. The creation of such camps was part of Greater Serbiaʼs plan to expel non-Serbs from the occupied communities. Prisoners were humiliated, forced to sing nationalist songs, beaten, tortured, raped, and forced to have sex in public. The Duško Tadić case was the first documented case of sexualized violence against men, although no direct charges were brought. A separate case was considered in which Tadić watched the rape and mutilation.

The second type is the so-called rape camps. They were widespread in the city of Foca, which was captured by the Bosnian Serbs in 1992. Women were kept in schools and sports complexes, and any Serbian soldier could freely select them there. Three Bosnian Serbs were tried in this case — Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovač and Zoran Vuković. The case involved more than 10 women, most of whom were under 20 at the time. In 1996, the defendants were found guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

• Kunarac, together with a subordinate, kept two 16-year-old girls in an apartment for more than six months. In addition to constant sexual violence, the girls were forced to cook, wash the soldiersʼ clothes and carry out other orders. But they were not the only ones whom Kunarac raped. Among his victims was a 19-year-old girl. The court found Kunarac guilty of rape, torture and enslavement. Since Kunarac held a managerial position, he was sentenced to the longest prison sentence — 28 years.
• Radomir Kovač was part of another commanderʼs military unit. He kept three women in his apartment: two sisters aged 12 and 15 and a 25-year-old woman. In addition to the typical sexualized violence, he forced them to dance striptease on a table at gunpoint, and took them to other Serbian militants. And later sold the youngest. The court found Kovač guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

The 1990s and 2000s: International Tribunal for Rwanda Recognizes Rape and Harassment as Part of Genocide

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda examined the mass rape of Tutsi women in the case of former ruling party leaders Mathieu Ngirumpatse and Edouard Karemera. The court noted that during the genocide, Tutsi women and girls were subjected to mass rape and harassment throughout Rwanda. The Chamber therefore noted that the rape and harassment were part of the genocide. The Chamber also found that Karemera and Ngirumpatse, although they did not do it themselves, were aware of it, could have stopped it, but did not do so. The Chamber therefore found them guilty of crimes against humanity.

2010s: Slaves of the Islamic State seek justice in courts of universal jurisdiction

In August 2014, Islamic State militants captured the Iraqi city of Sinjar, where the Yazidis, followers of their own religion, lived. ISIS considered them “devil worshippers” and tried to destroy them: they killed 5 000-7 000 people, mostly men, and took children to camps where they were turned into militants and their identity, including their language, was erased. To destroy the Yazidi community, the ISIS militants used sexualized violence: they called for the rape of Yazidi women, turned them into slaves, and sold them. A Yazidi woman who has been defiled cannot marry, and her child will not be accepted by the community, because Yazidism is only passed on through inheritance. Therefore, lawyers consider this to be genocide and another means of war.

The world has not created mechanisms to investigate the IS crimes, so human rights activists are appealing to universal jurisdiction. German lawyer Andrei Umansky represented a Yazidi woman who was sold at least 35 times in two years. She was enslaved by an IS couple of German origin — she did housework and was subjected to sexual violence. The militant’s wife encouraged this. The court in Düsseldorf, which lasted 94 sessions, recognized this as a crime against humanity — in the form of sexual violence and persecution on religious grounds. There was no talk of genocide at the time. The treatment of Yazidi women was part of a planned campaign organized by the commanders of the Islamic State. Propagandists distributed materials that encouraged slavery and sexual violence, including a collection of “questions and answers” about the use of slaves. There were also Russians among the militants, but the Russian Federation does not investigate the crimes of its citizens, unlike other countries.

After Feb 24: how do courts qualify sexualized violence by Russians against Ukrainians?

In Ukraine, the Russians also use sexualized violence as a tool of war — to demoralize, intimidate, force people to flee, and give up resistance. These are the same tools and the same goal that the perpetrators in the trials described above had. The head of the “JurFem: Education Center” Viktoria Karpa, notes that sexualized violence in conflict is primarily about humiliation, power, control, and hatred. But so far, Ukrainian investigators and prosecutors have classified all known cases of such violence as war crimes.

The most common crimes committed by Russians in Ukraine are sexualized violence such as torture in places where Ukrainian military and civilians are held, and attacks on women in the occupied territories in their homes.

What crimes are in question:

• In places of illegal detention, most victims are men. To torture, Russians connect electric current to the genitals, threaten with castration, there are cases of public rape of men. Only in the pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Kherson, 62 men became victims of such violence. Two men were tortured to death. The co-executive director of “Truth Hounds” Oksana Pokalchuk explains this by the influence of prison culture in the Russian Federation, where violence is a way of domination.
• Russians attack women in their homes, sometimes threatening their families or themselves. Or they enter the homes, commit a crime and leave. There have been cases when Russians settled in their homes, raped them and forced them to serve. There has already been a verdict in one of these cases, it was classified as a war crime. After de-occupation, the community often does not accept such women, although they were forced to do so in order to survive.

In Ukraine, until January 1, 2025, such crimes were classified only as war crimes. There are two reasons why this is so. The first is the legislation: there was no other element of the crime in the Ukrainian Criminal Code. The second is that crimes against humanity are different in that they must be systemic, that is, in all regions there must be the same patterns of behavior of Russians.

An independent UN commission has recognized systematic and widespread violence and torture against men in places of illegal detention. This gives grounds to consider them as crimes against humanity. Therefore, human rights activists are currently collecting materials for the International Criminal Court, which has had jurisdiction in Ukraine since 2014. Attacks on women in their homes are not yet a systemic practice, so such crimes in Ukraine are classified as war crimes.