'Russian soldiers raped me as my son cried nearby,' says Ukrainian woman

A Ukrainian woman has claimed that she was raped by two Russian soldiers who first shot her husband dead at her house in a village located close to Kyiv on March 9.

She alleged that she was raped repeatedly as her four-year-old son cried in a room nearby at her house in a small hamlet near Shevchenkove village in the Brovary district, outside Kyiv.

"I heard a single shot, the sounds of the gate opening and then the sound of footsteps in the house," she told The Times.

"I cried out, 'Where is my husband?' Then I looked outside and I saw him on the ground by the gate. This younger guy pulled a gun to my head and said, 'I shot your husband because he's a Nazi.'" she added.

She further stated that she was raped at gunpoint by the drunk Russian soldiers and was threatened to keep her mouth shut.

"He told me to take my clothes off. Then they both raped me one after the other. They didn't care that my son was in the boiler room crying. They told me to go shut him up and come back. All the time they held the gun by my head and taunted me -- shall we kill her or keep her alive?'" she said, recalling her ordeal.

The mother and her son are now living in Ternopil after having managed to flee from the house after her "attackers fell asleep."

Her husband's body has not been recovered yet. "We cannot bury him, we can't get to the village, because the village is still occupied," she said lamenting the fact that her son does not know about what had happened to his father.

She has alleged that the Russian troops targeted the family despite them having put a white sheet on their gate to show that there were civilians in the house.

The Ukrainian government has launched an investigation into the incident. While Russia has denied targeting civilians since its invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine's prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova said: "Kyiv prosecutors have identified a Russian serviceman who killed an unarmed man and repeatedly raped his wife."

According to the data provided by the United Nations, at least 1,119 civilians have been killed in Ukraine so far in the war.