Russian troops tell pregnant teen: 'Take your clothes off or we'll shoot you'

A pregnant 16-year-old girl has shared her experience of being raped at gunpoint by a Russian soldier after Putin's forces occupied the village of Krasniva in Kherson Oblast.

Dasha recounted the events of the evening she was attacked by a drunk Russian soldier on March 13, after she left the basement where she was sheltered with her family to get food.

She explained she was hiding with her mother, three brothers and one sister to escape from the Russian threat but two soldiers saw her and interrogated the family.

Dasha said one of the Russian soldiers, who was drunk, "talked to me and then told me to undress. I told him I'm not going to undress. Then he threatened to shoot me. I undressed."

Dasha told Bild about the horrific incident: "I told him I was 16 and pregnant. I told him I'm in my sixth month. But he said that at this stage nothing happens to the child, that many do."

She told the newspaper the rape lasted half an hour and the soldier then told her to go to a house he had occupied in the village and attempted to rape her again but stopped when his comrades arrived.

Bodies of civilians collected from streets in Bucha and taken to local cemetery.
STRINGER

Two of the soldiers then promised to shoot the rapist and took the girl back to her home however when the attacker was brought to Dasha three days later he denied everything.

Dasha's family were finally able to escape once Krasniva had been recaptured and liberated by Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned what he says are war crimes by Russian troops in the settlements around the Ukrainian capital.
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SER

She said: "At first they were completely normal. Then they started drinking. They found vodka among people in the village and drank. Then they started looking for young women. Some also grandmothers."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of committing war crimes in Bucha, where 25 girls and women aged 14 to 25 were "systematically" raped. Nine of the women are now pregnant.

French forensic experts have arrived in the city near Kyiv to help Ukraine authorities establish what happened in the town where hundreds of bodies have been discovered since Russian forces withdrew.

Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said "We have now a lot of jobs unfortunately with war crimes. They can see everything, they can see the situation here: real graves, real dead bodies, real bomb attacks. That's why for us this moment is very important."

The mayor of Bucha said on Tuesday that authorities had so far found 403 bodies of people they believed were killed by Russian forces during their occupation of the area but that the number was growing.

Anatoliy Fedoruk added during a briefing that it was too early for residents to return to the town, after Russian soldiers retreated late last month.

Reuters has not been able to verify the number of people found dead in Bucha or the circumstances of their deaths.