UN report documents 1,004 cases of sexual violence in Ukraine since 2022

Scope of the investigation

The United Nations Human Rights Office released a 20-page report on 18 September 2026 documenting 1,004 verified cases of sexual violence in Ukraine between 24 February 2022 and 31 July 2026. UN investigators compiled the findings from confidential interviews with hundreds of victims and witnesses, alongside official court registries and government records. Speaking at a press conference in Geneva, Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, noted that the figure represents only a fraction of the actual occurrences. UN monitors interviewed roughly 10% of prisoners released by both warring parties, having been denied access to Russian territory and Russian-occupied areas.

Documented abuse by Russian forces

The report attributes 89% of all verified cases to Russian perpetrators, including military personnel, penitentiary staff, and national security officials. The majority of the documented victims were men held in detention facilities, where physical abuse was applied during captivity. Among the methods recorded was the use of a Soviet-era military field telephone, known as a tapik, to deliver electric shocks to victims' genitals. The report recorded that 155 Ukrainian prisoners of war suffered this specific abuse at least once. Other documented violations included gang rape, genital mutilation, and sexual assaults with objects.

Women and children were also targeted, predominantly within Russian-occupied territories. The youngest verified victim was a four-year-old girl and the oldest was an 82-year-old woman, both subjected to rape by Russian forces. The report detailed individual accounts, including at least three women who were raped repeatedly over weeks or months. In one instance in the Kyiv region, two Russian soldiers raped a woman after killing her husband, threatening to shoot her in front of her four-year-old son if she resisted.

I am deeply alarmed by the prevalence of these abhorrent acts, and fear they are continuing in the context of the relentless violence we witness every day in Ukraine.

Allegations against Ukrainian authorities

The remaining 11% of documented cases (accounting for 112 incidents) were attributed to Ukrainian authorities. The nature and severity of these incidents differed from patterns observed on the Russian side. Approximately half of the allegations against Ukrainian personnel involved threats of sexual violence or degrading treatment against Russian and third-country detainees. The remaining cases included forced nudity, electric shocks, blows to the genitals, two instances of sexual assault, and two attempted rapes. UN investigators confirmed that they recorded no cases of completed rape committed by Ukrainian personnel against Russian prisoners of war.

The pattern is not comparable in scale nor in scope. Nearly half of the cases attributed to Ukrainian authorities consisted exclusively of threats of sexual violence.

Institutional reactions and access

Ukraine provided UN monitors with full access to its detention centers and prisoner-of-war facilities, facilitating the documentation process. Following the report's release, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated to Reuters that the findings demonstrate the scale of human rights violations committed by Russia, without commenting directly on the specific allegations against Kyiv's forces. Russian authorities did not provide a comment to Reuters regarding the findings.