Shocking images from Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine revealed what many suspected, that Russian soldiers were apparently committing war crimes. 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. 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.
Such tactics have been called “gendercide” by scholars who study gender and war.
