A project aimed at supporting victims of sexual violence by Russian occupants has been launched in Ukraine

The Office of the Prosecutor-General of Ukraine has already recorded 235 cases of sexual violence by Russian occupants on the territory of Ukraine. The age of the victims ranges from 4 to 82 years old.

The largest number of cases of sexual violence was recorded in Kherson region - 72, in Kyiv region - 52, in Donetsk region - 55, in Kharkiv region - 21, in Zaporizhzhya region - 15, in Chernihiv region - 6, in Luhansk region - 3, in Mykolayiv region - 9, in Sumy region - 2.

As Future for Ukraine portal writes, these war crimes are mostly silenced. This is also due to the reluctance of women to talk about their experiences. Therefore, the real figures may be much higher.

To help women who survived sexual violence by Russian occupiers, the Future for Ukraine Foundation launched a 7-day online awareness-raising campaign "When Words Are Not Enough" on the topic of sexual violence. Future for Ukraine's social media pages reveal the following topics:

⏺️Сексуальное violence related to military conflict.
⏺️Как support a survivor of grief or violence?
⏺️Что is victimblaming?
⏺️Чего not to tell a survivor of sexual violence?

We want women to feel our support and to find the strength to choose themselves and feel worthy to move on with their lives," the authors of the project pointed out.

It is indicated that the project is collecting for 100 psychological counselling sessions for women who survived sexual violence from the Russian military.

In order to support every Ukrainian woman who has experienced or witnessed sexual violence by Russian invaders, the Future for Ukraine Foundation has launched a charity project of anonymous psychological counselling GIDNA. As part of the project, each woman receives online sessions with a qualified psychotherapist. Experienced specialists of the Israeli Trauma Coalition (ITC) help, and psychotherapists are supervised by their Israeli colleagues, which is very important when working with severe trauma," the Foundation said.

They added that all counselling for victims is free of charge and anonymous.