The European Commissioner of the Interior, Ylva Johansson, warned this Wednesday that Russian soldiers have systematically committed rapes since the beginning of the war and that the number of raped women in Ukraine has grown exponentially.
Ylva Johansson left the warning during an interview with the Politico website, granted on the occasion of International Women’s Day.
The European Union (EU), in cooperation with the Ukrainian government, “funds and creates” victim support centers in many regions of Ukraine to provide assistance. Most of the women who arrive at these centers have already been raped, many of them girls, but there are other female victims of other traumas as well.
“Some were forced [por soldados russos] to see other people being killed or raped,” Johansson said.
There were already centers for help for battered women in Ukraine, but since the start of the war, in February 2022, the need for help and protection has increased: “The volume was completely different,” the commissioner stressed.
Johansson also explained that the European Commission has been working to provide assistance to female rape victims who become pregnant and plan to have an abortion in the various Member States.
The Polish government, one of the most reluctant states to perform abortions, promised Brussels that “opportunities would be provided” for Ukrainian women to have abortions, but Johansson noted: “I continue to receive information that women are being denied abortion.”
Similarly, the European Commissioner assured that, despite it being “very difficult” to say who has been most affected by this war, the specific refugee experience “has a gender” as it is mostly women and children trying to rebuild their lives in different EU countries.
In this refugee crisis, Johansson celebrates that the number of trafficked women and children is very low as, even before the war, Ukrainian citizens were among the first five victims of human trafficking to the EU.
“So far, I must say, we have very few cases of human trafficking given the number of vulnerable people and the women and children who arrived,” he stressed.
These good results, he assured, are due to the awareness-raising campaign against human trafficking in the various Member States.
Regarding the refugee crisis in Ukraine, it was announced today that the community manager is “ready” to extend the temporary protection of Ukrainian refugees until 2025 and even beyond that date, a measure that will facilitate their access to housing, employment, health care and education in the EU.
The military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 has so far led to the flight of more than 14.6 million people – 6.5 million internally displaced persons and more than 8.1 million to European countries – according to the latest data from the UN, which classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945).
At the moment, at least 18 million Ukrainians need humanitarian aid and 9.3 million people need food aid and shelter.
The Russian invasion – justified by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, with the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russian security – was condemned by the international community at large, which responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and Russia political and economic sanctions.
The UN presented 8,173 civilian deaths and 13,620 wounded as confirmed since the start of the war, underlining that these numbers are well below the real ones.
Source: DN
