Moment Russian missile hits pedestrian bridge in Kyiv
Moscow’s forces are using rape and sexual violence as part of their “military strategy,” a UN envoy has said.
Speaking during an interview with AFP, Pramila Patten, UN envoy, said that Moscow’s forces were using a "deliberate tactic to dehumanise the victims.”
The Independent reported in June that Ukraine claimed to have documented 15,000 suspected war crimes, including rapes by ill-equipped Russian soldiers who used sexual violence to strike fear into the local population.
Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky has said the newly mobilised men Russia recently dispatched to the front lines are expected by Kremlin leaders to be “cannon fodder”, who will survive for only a few weeks.
“Now Russia is sending thousands of its mobilised men to the front. They have no significant military training, but their command does not need it at all,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly address.
“But during this time, such use by Russian generals of their people as ‘cannon fodder’ makes it possible to create additional pressure on our defenders,” the president said.
