Sheriff’s deputy, Sergeiyev Smirnov, is on the scene of a family whose home has been damaged by shelling

They are looking for people that are left behind after homes were damaged by shelling. The two men traveled from the capital city of the country to form the unit.

Until early October, this area of the country was occupied by Russian troops. There are cars in the fields. The walls are marked by the letter Z.

According to the United Nations, cases of sexual and gender-based violence against people ranged in age from 4 to 81 years old. As of September, 43 criminal proceedings had been initiated, according to the UN.

Six sexual assault allegations have been documented by a team from Kyiv over the last two weeks. The real number is almost certainly much higher, they say.

“They walked around those rooms,” she says. One person stayed there, and the other came here and raped me. He walked around the room, and here in this place, he groped me.

She says that he pinned her against the wardrobe and ripped her clothes. “I was crying, begging him to stop, but with no success,” she says. I only thought of staying alive.

She recalls that he warned her not to tell anyone. “I didn’t tell my husband right away,” she says, in tears. “But I told my cousin, and my husband overheard. He said, ‘You should have told me the truth, but you kept silent.’”

She was too ashamed to step outside and spend three days at home. Then, in an extraordinary act of bravery, she says she confronted the Russian soldier’s commander.

The commander found the head of his unit. He told me that he had brutally punished him and then broke his jaw but the most severe punishment would be ahead. Like shooting. The commander asked if I was okay with it. I said that I want them all to be shot.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/europe/russia-ukraine-kherson-sexual-violence-intl/index.html

On the enigmatic case of Kherson, Ukraine: a counteroffensive approach to a village abandoned by Russia and Ukraine

Although the prosecutor, Kleshchenko, and police officer Oleksandr Svidro are looking specifically for evidence of sexual crimes, everywhere they go they are confronted with the horrors of occupation.

The village was behind Russian lines, but never directly occupied. Those gathered round shout that they’ve been abandoned for months, with no help from either Russia or Ukraine.

A man in a crowd tells investigators that he was held by Russian soldiers and executed in a scene straight out of a movie. It’s hard to hear, tales of torture like this are common here, but that’s not the subject of their work today.

Despite the dissatisfaction of these villagers, Ukraine’s counteroffensive in this part of the country has buoyed public hopes that victory might actually be possible – or at least that Kyiv might liberate key Russian-held cities, such as Kherson.

Starting slowly at the end of the summer, and then in large measure at the beginning of October, Ukrainian forces have regained hundreds of square miles of territory that Russia held since the early days of its full-scale invasion.

A short drive down roads pockmarked by shelling, in Tverdomedove, a mother and daughter tell Kleshchenko that they have not heard of any sexual crimes in their one-road hamlet.

Months later, after the Ukrainian military liberated her village in a lightning counteroffensive, she returned. Her roof had been reduced by shelling.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/europe/russia-ukraine-kherson-sexual-violence-intl/index.html

Purchasing a winter clothing for women in the armed forces using crowdfunding and grants: A case study on a young couple who are campaigning against the death of their son

She wants the ceiling to fall on her head so that she knows where to put it. I wouldn’t suffer if it fell and killed me. But I want to see my son again.”

Of course, many of these allegations will be impossible to prove; many do not even have a suspect. The team files its reports and investigators continue with their work, hoping that they can file charges in the future.

They just commissioned a new military uniform for pregnant women and are about to unpack it.

The young couple who were journalists before the war started, are now devoted to their organization which purchases items for women in the armed forces.

It soon became clear that servicewomen needed a lot more than uniforms. Everything from smaller boots to lighter plates for bulletproof vests to hygiene products is in demand.

Body armor plates, helmets and boots come from companies as far away as Sweden and Macedonia. But Kolesnyk and Drahanyuk say they are struggling with the procurement of winter items like sleeping bags and thermal clothing that will be important for comfort as winter sets in.

A million dollars in equipment has been distributed so far and at least 3000 women have been helped. If they’re on the front-line shooting rockets they might as well do it “in minimum comfort,” he tells CNN.

Not to compete with the government, we are doing this to help it. Their hub is overflowing with cardboard boxes full of kit, all paid for from crowdfunding and grants.

Roksolana, 23, is a border guard with a canine unit in Donetsk when she was released from a prisoner exchange

It is difficult to understand that you can’t go there with your sister. He says he wants to do his best to help his family and the army.

Twenty-one-year-old Roksolana, who gave only her first name for security reasons, walks in to pick up a uniform and other gear before heading out on her next assignment. An art school graduate, she joined the army in March and is now part of an intelligence unit.

“It’s so valuable to have these people who understand that we are tired of wearing clothes that are three sizes too big,” she says. We wore tracksuits and sneakers, but we had no helmets. We feel that we are indeed humans.

She giggles as she laces up her new boots with impeccable long fingernails. Before they hug goodbye, Drahanyuk hands Roksolana a copy of “The Choice,” the best-selling memoir by Holocaust survivor and psychologist Edith Eger. The aim is to assist in the process of trauma. Zemlyachki has also formed partnerships with military psychologists to whom women in combat can reach out.

Other women, such as 25-year-old Alina Panina, are receiving psychological support through the Ukrainian military. A border guard with a canine unit, Panina spent five months in captivity at the infamous Olenivka prison in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region after leaving the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.

She went into mandatory rehabilitation at a military hospital on October 17 after being released from prison as part of a prisoner exchange with Russia.

“I was not prepared [for captivity], and we discussed this a lot with other women prisoners that life hasn’t prepared us for such [an] ordeal,” Panina says at a pizza bar run by veterans in downtown Kyiv.

Now her partner’s fate is up in the air. A border guard is still in captivity. “I know he is alive but don’t know in which prison he is,” Panina says sadly as she scrolls through pictures of him.

Adoption in Mariupol: Vladimir Bespalaya and his wife, Ilya, during the February 24, 1917, Russian invasion of Ukraine

When Russian forces invaded their country in late February, Vladimir Bespalov and Maria Bespalaya feared their long-held dream of starting a family through adoption was over.

On February 24, the first day of the war, the train worker said that he remember it very clearly. “We thought we were too late. We realized we were already in a state of war, and we thought we could no longer adopt.”

The couple decided to try to do it sooner because of the situation. We were waiting to earn more money, have a better car, and buy a house so that we could give our children something to play with. We thought it was worthwhile to adopt a child now and work together as a family during the war.

Weeks later that message would reach a volunteer helping those fleeing Mariupol, a southern city that became emblematic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ruthless campaign to take Ukrainian land, no matter the cost.

Russians bombarded the city with artillery, forcing residents to go underground for weeks. It now has almost all the buildings damaged or destroyed, and an unknown number of dead under the rubble.

After Bespalaya was told by police about his mother being hit by Russian fire, Bespalov was also made aware of it.

“The men were drinking alcohol and the children of those neighbors bullied him. Bespalaya told CNN that he was starving and freezing. She is careful not to mention it in front of him, but he told the woman that he had been in the basement for three weeks and called her mama.

Bespalov and Bespalaya are now Ilya’s legal guardians. They have been a little family for more than six months, and they plan to formally adopt him as soon as possible. Adoption processes are currently suspended due to martial law.

Like any parents, the young couple are fiercely protective of Ilya, sheltering him from the horrors of war the best they can and trying to give him a sense of security and stability.

“You try to take your mind off the fighting and immerse yourself in spending time with your child. We try to create memories of a normal childhood. Work takes time, but we spend every free moment together,” said Bespalov, who as a crucial railroad worker has not been called up for military service.

There’s nothing normal about war. After they posted their appeal on Instagram, the couple set up two spare rooms for the possible arrival of a child – one a nursery with a white crib and blue bedding, the other equipped with a bunk bed and lots of toys.

“I just totally stopped being afraid of adoption. She told CNN she was confident she could care for anyone and deal with their character while having a child.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/14/europe/ukraine-orphaned-boy-new-family-intl-cmd/index.html

Do not expect the dark anymore, but I am afraid that the light will turn back on,” Ilya told the couple in Slovyansk, Kyiv

But that plan, too, was shattered by war. Soon after it began, the pair were forced to flee their home in Slovyansk, a city in the frontline Donetsk region, for Kyiv.

In April, they finally received the call they had been hoping for, from a volunteer in Mariupol: there was a little boy with no parents, could the couple care for him?

The following morning, they started out on the two-day car journey to Dnipro, where Ilya was sheltering, to meet the boy who would become part of their family.

“Now we have that love, that love that makes you a family. We did not have a baby, but our love is real and we are still together.

But little Ilya is learning to cope. As he played with the couple in a living room lit by candles during one of the power outages, he looked up and said: “I am not afraid of the dark anymore. I know the light will turn back on.”