Global Courant
Ukrainian soldiers fire a cannon near Bakhmut, an eastern city where fierce fighting is taking place against Russian troops, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, May 15, 2023.AP Photo/Libkos, File
A Ukrainian psychologist described the horrors two soldiers went through in a new one report from The Times.
Anzhelika Yatsenko cried when she learned that the young men had been castrated while prisoners in Russia.
It was “the first time I didn’t act like a professional psychologist,” she told The Times.
A Ukrainian psychologist described the horrors her patients had to go through in a new report describing the consequences of sexual violence against men in the war in Ukraine.
Two Ukrainian soldiers, who had been held in Russian captivity, were referred to 41-year-old psychologist Anzhelika Yatsenko after being released in a prisoner exchange, Christina Lamb, chief foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times, reported.
The soldiers struggled to tell their psychologist, who specializes in troubled young men, what had happened to them. When Yatsenko, who works in Poltava, finally learned what had happened to the two young fighters who had been castrated, she said it was so terrible that she struggled to act professionally, The Times reported.
“I knew from previous cases that they were probably tortured,” Yatsenko said. “As someone who gets referred to the most difficult cases, mostly men under 35, it’s very hard to surprise me.”
But when the fighters, aged 25 and 28, told her what they’d been through, it was “the first time I didn’t act like a professional psychologist.”
“I had never heard anything so horrible. I told them I had to go to the toilet and was going to cry and cry. I didn’t want them to see because maybe they thought there was no hope,” she told The Times.
The two soldiers were brutally beaten and drunk Russians castrated them with a knife while they were imprisoned – at that point they thought they were going to die. After their return, they were suicidal, The Times reported.
The torture not only takes a physical toll, Yatsenko, but also the painful psychological effect of no longer being able to be sexually active.
Story continues
The experience of the tortured POWs illuminates an often minimized aspect of the brutality of war. While sexual violence against women and girls receives much attention in the context of war, sexual violence against men is less well documented.
On both sides of the conflict, prisoners of war have faced violent and inhumane conditions – some of which may amount to war crimes, the UN recently found.
The story of the treatment of these soldiers comes as Ukraine’s counter-offensive is underway and the Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to break through and liberate Russian occupied territory.
Ukraine faces a “very difficult battle,” a US military official said said recently. “It’s a very violent battle. And it’s likely to take a significant amount of time at great expense.”
Read the original article Business Insider
