Wartime rape functions as part of this strategy. In the type of conflict known as an ethnic war, the goal of acquiring and securing territory leads to the most barbarous tactics being used, aimed at reducing the other side’s willingness to fight by using excessive cruelty, torture, terror, displacement and even genocide. They include punishment, torture, extraction of information and the intent to destroy the morale of the other side.Ītrocities appear to be more prevalent in wars when the goal is to terrorize the population and demobilize people so that they will flee in great numbers. Such tactics have been called “ gendercide” by scholars who study gender and war.Īs an expert on rape during ethnic conflict, I know that – like so many other conflicts – wartime gender-based violence has a variety of motivations. A Human Rights Watch report released the next day and a Guardian story by Bethan McKernan the day after that asserted that Russian soldiers used rape as a deliberate tactic of war. An image of dead naked women under a blanket on the road photographed by Mikhail Palinchak 12½ miles (20 kilometers) outside of Kyiv was tweeted by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine on April 2.
Shocking images from Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine revealed what many suspected, that Russian soldiers were apparently committing war crimes.
