Evidence suggests sexual abuse of Ukrainian men is now a core Russian tactic

Serhii Boychuk said he suffered sexual torture at the hands of his Russian guards.

July 25, 2026 at 11:00 pm ET

KHARKIV, Ukraine—Before he left for the front line in 2022, Serhii Boychuk told his wife that if captured, he didn’t want to be taken alive. A few months later, the Russians took him prisoner. Guards beat and tortured him sexually for more than two years, he said. 

He recounted being raped with bottles and sticks, and having a knife pressed against his genitals. He still finds it difficult to walk. “They wanted to psychologically break me,” said Boychuk, now 33. 

Other Ukrainian former detainees described similar experiences of sexualized torture while in Russian prisoner-of-war camps. Their accounts match the findings of Ukrainian prosecutors and intelligence services and United Nations investigators, who have conducted extensive interviews with former prisoners—both soldiers and civilians—throughout the more than four-year war. 

This growing body of testimony suggests that Russian sexual violence against POWs and civilian prisoners has been systematic—and condoned, even encouraged, by senior Russian officials.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-ukraine-sexual-violence-15f9781d