“I went out and cried and cried”: Ukrainian psychologist on castrated soldiers

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There are videos showing inhuman cruelty: a Ukrainian soldier lying on his stomach, a Russian soldier in blue surgical gloves stands behind him, the carpet knife in his hand. Later, the victim is shown dead – his genitals severed in his mouth.

Some POWs endure the same ordeal – and survive. A Ukrainian psychologist treated two of them. 41-year-old Anschelika Jatsenko tells the English “The Sunday Times” how difficult it is to process the horror.

“I thought I was dying of blood poisoning”

When the two soldiers, aged 25 and 28, told her what the Russian torturers had done to them, for the first time in her career she did not act like a professional psychologist. Yatsenko says: “I apologized, said I had to go to the toilet, went out and cried and cried.”

The two young men told her that they had been beaten during detention and that drunk Russians had castrated them with a knife. They both thought they would die from these serious injuries. “One of them said to me, ‘I don’t know how I’m still alive, there was so much blood, I thought I was dying of blood poisoning.'”

‘The worst thing that can happen to a young man’

The men are suicidal due to their injuries and are taking antidepressants. It is not only the physical damage, but also a mental burden. Yatsenko told the Sunday Times: “Imagine it’s two young men who have just started their sexual life and in a second it’s all over. They still feel something, they’re full of hormones, but they can’t do anything. You will never be sexually active. It’s the worst thing that can happen to a young man.”

Jatsenko is looking for distraction for the men. They don’t want to talk to their family and friends about what they’ve been through. “Your dignity has been damaged so badly and you should not forget that. The Russians told them, ‘We are doing this so that you cannot have any more children.’ To me it’s genocide.”

One of the two now wants to get back to the front despite his injury. “He insisted,” she said. “He says he’s needed and it’s easier to be in a place where there are no women. Given what happened, I think he wants to start killing Russians.”

Sexual violence as a war strategy

The UN last year criticized Russia for using sexual violence as part of a military strategy. Sexual degradation is a deliberate tactic used by Moscow.

Pramila Patten, 64, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, told AFP in late 2022: “When women are detained and raped for days, when you start raping little boys and men, when you see a series of genital mutilations, when you hear women reporting about Russian soldiers armed with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy.” (new)

Source: Blick