Russian troops tortured Oleksii Sivak for weeks, giving him electric shocks to his genitals in a freezing basement in his hometown of Kherson, as punishment for resisting their rule.
When Ukrainian troops liberated the city in the fall of 2022, Sivak was presented with a long list of medical specialists who could assist in his recovery and was asked to check off the ones he needed.
Almost every part of the body and mind was covered, but there were no urologists, doctors who treat the male urinary and reproductive organs.
“I asked them, 'Am I supposed to see a gynecologist?' “I was shocked,” he said. We have had a war since 2014. [when Russian proxy forces occupied Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine] and no one had even thought about the men who were victims of sexual violence.”
It was Sivak's first encounter with a dangerous silence, born of stigma and taboo, about the wounds his Russian jailers had inflicted on him. It was also his first step toward becoming an activist for a group that has been virtually invisible, even as its numbers increase at a disturbing speed.
The UN human rights commissioner has documented hundreds of cases of sexual violence carried out by Russian troops since the large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Two-thirds of the victims are men and boys who were tortured in Russian prisons.
Russia deploys systematic sexual torture against Ukrainians, both civilians and prisoners of war, in “almost all” detention centers where they are held. the UN found.
That includes “pescador, attempted pescador, threats of pescador and castration, beatings or electric shocks to the genitals, repeated forced nudity, and sexualized humiliation.”
“The numbers in Ukraine are finta alarming,” said Charu Bote Hogg, executive director of All Survivors Venture, which supports men and boys who have experienced sexual violence.
The organization maintains a integral database of cases dating back three decades, and the scale of new abuses recorded in Ukraine is unprecedented, he said. Sexual violence against men “occurs all over the world, but the struggle is always to get documented cases.”
In Ukraine, the UN has recorded 236 incidents of sexual violence against men and two against boys in less than three years.
The figures are likely the result of the systematic use of torture by Russian forces and the efforts of Ukrainian authorities to support survivors and collect evidence.
“I think we should give credence to the interview methods that support these revelations,” Hogg said. Returnees “receive psychological support and are interviewed shortly after their release, when the trauma is severe and it is relatively easier for survivors to tell their experiences.”
If Ukraine is setting a stunning example by recording this form of Russian torture, it is only beginning to grapple with its impact.
Sivak has created Ukraine's first support network for male survivors, in part because the first weeks after his release were terribly lonely. Support groups, resources, and medical help were almost all geared toward women.
“One of the objectives of this organization is to open a path where it did not exist before, to be able to be guides on it for others,” he said.
The ordeals of the male survivors are little known and rarely discussed in Ukraine, even as the country celebrates the seen sacrifice of other soldiers and survivors. Images of amputees have become common, but there are no billboards or magazine articles showing the largely hidden injuries of sexual violence.
Few survivors are willing to speak publicly about attacks on their bodies that too often feel like attacks on their dignity and masculinity.
The feeling of shame is one of the reasons why Russia exploits sexual violence as a weapon of war and a driving force behind Sivak's decision to speak out. He wants the network of survivors to be a beacon for those trying to recover and a voice for those still held.
“If I stay silent, it's like it never happened, and that means it's not happening now,” he said. “The reality is that many men are still in basements. If I do not use my voice, how will those who are not free be heard?”
Other detainees are at the center of Sivak's activism because they were key to his survival and recovery. The men locked together in the Kherson cell were doctors, psychologists, and friends of each other because they had no one else.
Their conversations picked up after his release and eventually evolved into a casual support group, “the alumni association for men from Ukraine who have been detained and tortured.”
The name came from a dark joke made by Sivak's wife, Tamara, whose empathy and practical efficiency have made her an important support to him and other survivors.
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She saw him catching up with a former cellmate and asked them, “Am I disturbing the class reunion?” So they began to call themselves “students.”
They considered a less frivolous name for the official association, one that might be easier to explain to outsiders, but time and again they returned to feeling like a group shaped by their shared experience.
“We say we are graduates without diplomas, our experience is etched in our bodies and our souls,” Sivak said.
His life as an activist began on February 24, 2022, when Russian troops stormed his hometown, Kherson. Until then he had been a sailor, a “ghost of the sea,” work contracts outside the home that usually lasted seven to nine months.
“My activism began with the large-scale invasion. Before that, my goal in life was simply to create a family. “I never cared about politics,” he said.
He was scheduled to leave to start a new contract on February 25, but stayed to care for his family and launch a campaign of defiance against the city's new Russian rulers.
For six months he ran a soup kitchen for elderly residents during the day and spent his nights passing through the city with Ukrainian flags, banners of the national trident pinned to the Russian double-headed eagle and other anti-occupation messages.
He was then arrested and subjected to “interrogation” sessions that culminated in electric shocks to his genitals. “They usually use it in the worst stages of torture, because what could be worse than this,” he said. “Only death.”
The testimonies of repatriated prisoners suggest that few are spared from the worst. Two-thirds of prisoners of war and medical detainees interviewed by the UN since March 2023 had survived some form of sexual abuse in Russian prisons.
“The wide geographic distribution of torture sites and the prevalence of shared patterns demonstrate that Russian authorities have used torture as a common and acceptable practice with a sense of impunity,” said Erik Møse, president of the independent international committee of the UN. commission of inquiry on Ukraine.
In testimony before the UN Human Rights Council in September, he also highlighted “the recurrent use of sexual violence as a form of torture in almost all of these detention centers.”
Sivak believes that sexual violence is so normalized in Russian prisons that most Ukrainians detained there are survivors, even if they do not recognize some attacks, including punches or kicks to the genitals, as sexual assaults.
“Probably almost all of the men released from captivity are part of our network,” he said. “Just not everyone is aware of it.”
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