Olena Yahupova Survived Russian Torture and Rape. Now She’s Taking Her Case to the World.

Eight months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on October 6, 2022, Russian soldiers appeared at Olena Yahupova’s door and took her to a nearby police station for questioning. She suspected that her neighbors had told the soldiers that her husband was in Ukraine’s military and that she was sending him to Russian military positions and activity in Kamianka Dniprovska. In reality, Yahupova had little contact with her husband, often not hearing from him for weeks at a time. She had no idea if he was alive or dead. 

At the station, Yahupova was taken into a room where she was interrogated for hours. Russia’s Federal Security Service [FSB] agents beat her over the head with a bottle of water, choked her with a cable, and held her at gunpoint, demanding that Yahupova give them information about her husband’s brigade and that of other people associated with Ukrainian troops in Kamianka Dniprovska. Despite reiterating to the soldiers that she had no information on either, she continued to be detained for hours, blood dripping down her back from head injuries she sustained during interrogation without receiving medical attention. She was eventually taken to a holding cell, where she spent the next two weeks being taken out and routinely interrogated. 

Meanwhile Russian soldiers fabricated a case against her. They broke into her apartment, planting guns in her rooms, and two anti-tank launchers in the cellar. The soldiers then returned to her home to conduct a staged “raid,” the videos of which were later broadcast on pro-Kremlin news channels. The first prison that Yahupova was sent to, one of a few where she was detained over the next five months, was where an FSB agent raped Yahupova; but it was far from the last time she would be assaulted by her Russian captors.  

Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has long been a war crime, and from February 2022 to August 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) documented at least 382 cases of CRSV committed by the Russian Federation. 

However, Danielle Bell, Head of Mission for the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), emphasized that the figure does not reflect the full scope of potential cases. The mission is unable to document the experiences of individuals still imprisoned by Russia or living under occupation, as the Russian Federation continues to deny access to territories it controls.

“There are also survivors who have yet to come forward and others who were killed before they could speak up,” said Bell.

Throughout the war, Bell said the HRMMU has documented rape, attempted rape, electric shocks and beatings to the genitals, sexual degradation, threats of rape, and threats of castration. Bell spoke at the organization office in Kyiv and added that they are also documenting “unjustified cavity searches, forced witnessing of sexual violence, prolonged nudity,” amongst other forms of CRSV. 

Belle confirmed that her office has heard of cases of women being subject to the same treatment as Yahupova while in Russian custody.

“Some of the acts that have been described to us are so grotesque that we could not report on them publicly even though we have the consent to use these stories. They’re too awful,” said Bell.

“I’ve been doing this [work] for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything this horrific. The treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war by the Russian Federation is the worst I’ve seen in my career. It’s simply incomparable to what I’ve seen,” Bell said, sighing deeply..

Yahupova said that two weeks into her detainment, Russian soldiers decided that they either needed to charge her with a crime or let her go, so they charged her with extremism and for helping to direct Ukrainian artillery fire, she claims, something she has adamantly denied. For the next five months, Yahupova was shuffled around various Russian labor camps near their frontline positions. The conditions at the camp were “inhumane,” Yahupova said. She was forced to dig trenches for Russian soldiers, wash their clothes, and prepare food for their troops, while doing so, Yahupova said Russian soldiers also raped her.

Prisoners who were detained in the summer were forced to wear the same clothing even during the winter months, with no additional protection provided by soldiers against the bitter Ukrainian winter, which constantly reaches temperatures below freezing. 

Yahupova was told that she would spend the rest of her life in Russian custody. But in March 2023, she was inexplicably released from the camp after one Russian soldier — perhaps out of sympathy. The soldier, Yahupova said, allowed one inmate to use a phone to call a relative, who then called Russian higher-ups that managed to have the labor camp liberated.

Yahupova was then sent back to Kamianka Dniprovska, which remains under Russian occupation. When she returned home, a shell of her former self, she found that Russian soldiers had killed her dog. 

In Kamianka Dniprovska, one Russian soldier told Yahupova she was forbidden to speak about what happened to her.

Realizing the meager odds of remaining safe in Kamianka Dniprovska, Yahupova decided to leave, traveling alone through Russia, the Northern Baltics, Poland, and then Kyiv with few essential belongings and one personal item: a photo book of her two daughters. Once back in Ukraine, Yahupova traveled to Kharkiv, where she was reunited with her husband.

As Yahupova tried to reintegrate back into Ukrainian society, she hid her rape from her family. “People would just be traumatized, but the problem wouldn’t be solved,” she said. 

On May 1, 2023, two months after being freed from the Russian prisons, Yahupova went to a police station in Kyiv to prepare a statement on her experiences while in captivity. Over the next few months, with the help of Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU], Yahupova managed to track down the identities of the Russian men who raped her. 

Since then, Yahupova has been building a case against her assaulters and is planning to bring it to international courts, where she hopes the men can be charged with crimes against humanity for the torture, rape, enslavement, and murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war like her. 

“It’s already been two years. But we’ve now reached the point where all the documents are ready and when we finally submit it to that committee, I think I’ll be at least halfway happy,” said Olena.

“And when they make some kind of decision there—that they agree that, yes, this fact exists there, that torture took place—that will already be a big victory for me. So it’s exactly those little victories on the way to showing everything to exposing it when it happens—that’s what gives strength,” she added.