Anguish, anger and pain: a Ukrainian woman recounts the rape she suffered at the hands of a Russian soldier

By Molly Hunter, Mariia Ulianovska and Lawahez Jabari -

BUCHA, Ukraine — Olena says the countdown to her rape began the day she was injured in a Russian airstrike.

On the first day, a piece of boiling shrapnel embedded itself in his chest after an attack near his home in Hostomel, a suburb of kyiv.

"I thought I was dying. It was extreme pain," Olena, 28, said this week.

"It burned like a fire."

Olena pointed to just below her left breast, saying the shrapnel left a mark about three-quarters of an inch wide.

Additionally,

, and it's ripped in place.

Although she doesn't remember the exact date, she says it was around the middle of March.

She still hurts.

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The next day, he urgently needed to have his bandage changed, and despite the fact that his village was already occupied by Russian troops, he went out in search of medical help.

Two soldiers offered to help her, she said.

One administered first aid, while the other stood guard at a nearby apartment.

Olena says she was raped by Russian soldiers who captured her in early March and held her hostage for two days.

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As he left, the second soldier, smoking a cigarette in the street, warned him: "Go home, it's for your own safety."

Other Russian soldiers changed her bandages on the third day, and Olena's recovery continued uneventfully.

Olena is slim, with a small frame.

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She and her husband, Sasha, a truck driver, were poor even before the war broke out and have a 7-year-old daughter who lives with relatives.

After the Russians withdrew and when the couple fled to this area of ​​Bucha, the volunteers pointed them out to an abandoned hut where they could stay.

The entrance door does not close completely and there is no lock.

It's as cold inside as it is outside, but there's a fireplace, Olena said.

As he spoke in the abandoned cabin, Olena drank tea from a broken cup.

She would take long pauses, and she would grip the cup with both hands, even though it was no longer hot.

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There are numerous

, according to Ukraine's prosecutor general's office.

Olena's case is an example.

On the fourth day after the attack, three soldiers came to her house in civilian clothes, she said.

She had no idea how they knew she was hurt.

One of them, who appeared to be in his 40s, offered to take a look at her wound upstairs, she said.

"He checked me out," Olena recounted.

"But he didn't provide me with any medical help."

He had no bandages, no medical kit or antiseptic cream, he said.

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When she went downstairs, she found her husband lying in a pool of blood.

She hadn't heard anything upstairs and she started yelling at them to get out.

Ella Sasha later said that soldiers had asked her to drive trucks for Russian troops and when she refused, they beat him and broke at least one rib.

"They wanted to finish him off," Olena said, weeks later.

Sasha still has difficulty sitting up.

But the next day, one of the soldiers returned, the same one who had supposedly looked at his wound.

This time, he was alone.

"He grabbed my arm and pushed me into the car," Olena said, adding that it all happened so fast.

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After an hour in the car, Olena recognized the building they were approaching.

Before she was injured, she had already encountered Russian troops in the city of Gostomel.

In early March, while she was looking for water, troops seized her, she said, and held her captive for 48 hours.

At the time, about 40 other people were being held in a small apartment, including a pregnant woman.

There was only one bathroom.

She decided to escape when she realized that her captors had been distracted.

So that day, with his new captor, he arrived at the same building.

It was almost deserted and had been bombed, he said.

The Russian troops had looted everything.

"I didn't even try to scream, because there was no one around,

" Olena said, shaking her head.

The apartment was sparsely furnished, with an old table, he remembered.

After she was forced to undress her, she said she stood there, naked and with the bandage still on her left breast.

She searched the room to find a bra, to cover her wound.

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"He didn't want to see her," he said.

She described the rape in brief detail.

"He was crying. He quickly did what he wanted," Olena said.

She only thought about "how to stay alive".

He ran all the way home and came crying.

The couple decided to leave the city and in the middle of the night they arrived at the abandoned cabin in Bucha.

About two and a half weeks later, Olena did not raise her voice when she said,