More than four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, prosecutors, international investigators and survivor testimony have built a consistent picture of sexual violence used by Russian forces against civilians and prisoners of war. The cases have accumulated in occupied villages, detention cells and prisoner-of-war facilities across the conflict zone. Until recently, nearly all perpetrators remained beyond Ukrainian jurisdiction. Two cases — one proceeding in court, one cut short by a prisoner exchange — mark a cautious but significant shift.
Sergei Karpilovich, 51, from Russia's Sverdlovsk Oblast, is the first Russian soldier to stand trial in person in Ukraine on charges of raping a Ukrainian civilian. He is accused of repeatedly raping a woman who had taken shelter in a basement in the village of Zolotyi Kolodiaz, in Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, over two months while the area was under Russian occupation. Karpilovich was captured on 9 December 2025, when Azov troops detained 18 Russian soldiers during a clearing operation. He has been charged under Article 438.1 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which carries a maximum sentence of 12 years in prison.
He denies the charges. Speaking to journalists before the trial, he said he had fallen in love with the woman and did not believe she would testify against him. Prosecutors contend he used psychological coercion, telling the woman he had been ordered to leave no civilians alive. Whether she will appear in court remains unknown.
The second case did not reach a verdict. Liliia Prutian, a military medic serving with Ukraine's Aidar Battalion, was captured by Russian troops sixteen days into the invasion, near Mariupol. According to Meduza, she was raped in captivity, held in cells in Donetsk and then Rostov, and put on trial by Russian authorities on terrorism charges. She was released in a prisoner swap before any verdict was delivered. The war had split her family: her oldest son served in Ukraine's armed forces, her middle son joined the Russian army, and her youngest spent three years stranded alone as a teenager in occupied territory.
Their stories surface against a broader pattern that international investigators say is neither random nor incidental. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded that Russian authorities committed the war crimes of rape and sexual violence as a form of torture, and that enforced disappearances of civilians have been widespread and systematic, likely amounting to crimes against humanity.
Male prisoners of war have also described sustained abuse. Serhii Boychuk, now 33, told the Wall Street Journal that Russian guards raped him with bottles and sticks and held a knife against his genitals over more than two years in captivity. He still finds it difficult to walk.
The documented cases represent a fraction of what investigators believe has occurred. The New York Times spoke with more than a dozen women who alleged sexual abuse by Russian forces; Ukrainian authorities and humanitarian organisations say the true number of victims is almost certainly far higher, with some women reporting pregnancies resulting from assaults. Ukrainian prosecutors have also charged at least one further named soldier: Mykola Senenko was charged with rape of a woman in Kherson Oblast in 2022 after an investigation by the Kyiv Independent that included interviews with local residents and officials.
The Karpilovich trial does not resolve the larger question of how many perpetrators will ever face a courtroom. Most remain in Russia, beyond Ukrainian reach. What the proceedings do establish is a legal record — one that prosecutors and human rights organisations intend to use as the foundation for future accountability, whenever the conditions for it arrive.
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