A Russian soldier is alleged to have killed a man and raped his wife amid a storm of claims that invading troops in Ukraine have been sexually abusing women.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said that a Russian soldier has been identified after murdering a man and raping his wife in the Brovarskyi district of Kyiv.
The Kyiv Independent tweeted: " In a village in Brovarskyi district, a Russian soldier murdered a man and, along with another soldier, raped his wife, according to Iryna Venediktova. One of them was identified and is now wanted."
A woman has also alleged that other women have been raped and civilians shot in the city of Irpin on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Images have been shown around the world of the horrors in Irpin which came under heavy shelling from the Russian army with people killed as they fled homes on fire or reduced to rubble.
The panic was shown on the faces of vulnerable people as they tried to escape the city which eventually fell to the invading Russians.
Now there are claims of atrocities carried out by Vladimir Putin ’s troops in Irpin.
Anastasia Taran, 30, who was able to escape Irpin claims that civilians have been raped and killed in what has become a “hell”.
She told euromaidanpress.com : “Irpin is hell. There are plenty of Russian soldiers out there who just shoot people who enter private homes and at best just kick out of their homes.
“They rape women and the dead are just being dumped. They open the basements where people are hiding and shoot them.”
Anastasia, from Enerhodar, was working as waitress in Irpin and now has been giving tips on Instagram to others on the best way to get out of the city.
“Our checkpoint is in front of the bridge, you have to be very careful there because the occupiers shoot at it,” she said.
“We came under mortar fire, the explosions were 50-100 meters from us. You have to listen carefully to the instructions from our soldiers: if they shout ‘sky’ it means you have to hide, if they shout ‘run’ it means that you have to flee to the next shelter.”
There have been other claims that Russian soldiers have been sexually assaulting civilians in Ukraine.
There has also been an image on social media of a captured Russian soldier carrying condoms.
Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba and MP Lesia Vasylenko both have talked about rape and attacks by Russian troops.
Ms Vasylenko said there have been reports of Russian troops sexually abusing senior citizens who have been unable to flee from the outskirts of Kyiv.
She said: "We're talking about senior citizens of Ukraine. It's an extremely painful topic for us to take up, but unfortunately it's still the very beginning of the atrocities that will go on.
"Putin's army is committing war crimes, and crimes against humanity."
Now more than 3.5 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee during Putin’s 27-day long invasion.
Having failed to seize the capital Kyiv or any other major city with a swift offensive, Russia is waging a war of attrition that has reduced some urban areas to rubble and prompted Western concern that the conflict could escalate, even to a nuclear war.
The United Nations human rights office in Geneva said on Tuesday it had recorded 953 civilian deaths and 1,557 injured since the invasion. The Kremlin denies targeting civilians.
Western officials said Russian forces were stalled around Kyiv but making some progress in the south and east. Ukrainian fighters are repelling Russian troops in some places but cannot roll them back, they said.
