Two Russian soldiers suspected of raping a pregnant woman near Kyiv

Ukrainian police report that two Russian service members from the 90th Tank Division are suspects in a criminal case about the rape of a pregnant woman and the torture of civilians outside of Kyiv in March 2022.

According to materials published on the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s website, the suspects served in the 6th Tank Regiment, which controlled the village of Velyka Dymerka, in the Brovary district of the Kyiv region, from March 8 to 31, 2022. The police report does not name the suspects, but it is clear from documents from the prosecutor that they are Rinat Khakimyanov and Arslan Salikhov. It is unclear where the two men are now.

Case materials say that on March 21, Khakimyanov and another, unidentified soldier threatened a local woman with guns and ordered her into her house. Salikhov allegedly remained outside to make sure no one else entered. The woman told the soldiers that she was three months pregnant, and asked them not to rape her, the document says.

According to the investigation, the unidentified soldier struck the woman in the face with the butt of his rifle, knocking out four of her teeth, doused her arm in an unidentified liquid, which burned her, then threw her on a sofa, hitting the back of her head with his hand several times, and raped her, continuing to beat her about the head, which made her lose consciousness.

The case file says that Khakimyanov then doused her with water to bring her back to consciousness, and then also raped her. In the process, he strangled her and pressed her face into the sofa, because of which she lost consciousness again.

The case materials also state that on March 20, Khakimyanov, Salikhov, and other soldiers illegally deprived a resident of his freedom and forced him to dig a trench; they allegedly held him in a basement with his hands and feet bound, tied to a battery. They also stole phones from several Velyka Dymerka residents.

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The 90th Tank Brigade and other units of the Central Military District approached Kyiv from the east at the beginning of Russia’s invasion, and were stopped outside of Brovary. Soldiers from the brigade also stopped in the village of Bohdanikva, where Russian troops murdered and raped several people (Meduza has written about this in detail.) Ukraine tried one soldier from the brigade, Mikhail Romanov, in absentia for rape and murder.