Українською читайте тут.
On August 11, 2023, the website of the Sever.Realii project of the Russian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) published an article by Russian journalist Irina Novak entitled “Betrayed a family – will betray the country. Russian soldiers cheat on their wives at the front”.
The article describes how the Russian military in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine “cheat” on their legal wives with Ukrainian women.
We, as Ukrainian women’s human rights and media organizations, are deeply outraged by this article’s rhetoric and harmful imperial narratives.
In particular, the journalist uses the phrases: “married soldiers and officers find time for relationships with Ukrainian women”, “I thought he was a hero, but he is a hero-lover” and others.
These narratives not only shift the focus away from the bloody and unjust war that Russia continued with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. They also justify conflict-related sexual violence, which is a war crime. Such content whitewashes international criminals and the aggressor country Russia.
We emphasize that any sexual acts of the Russian military against people living in the occupied territories cannot be considered consensual and treated as a relationship.
Even if it seems so, and even if women in these territories mistakenly think that they are in a consensual relationship without sufficient information, this still qualifies as sexual violence, and this is the position of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Life in the temporarily occupied territories under the control of the foreign army is a “coercive environment”. It precludes consent as such. This is stated in the case of the Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen and the case of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia “Case against Dragoljub Kunarac, Zoran Vuković and Radomir Kovač”.
Despite the fact that the journalist provided a disclaimer at the end of the article stating that “Russian military, involved in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has been accused of sexualized violence against residents of the occupied territories since the first days”, we believe the disclaimer does not change the overall thrust of the article.
In addition, the article shows a photo depicting a military man and a girl, including their shoes. This photo does not illustrate the horrors of war, but romanticizes it. Such a photo would be more appropriate for a story not about the “survivor” and the “aggressor”, but about the Ukrainian military, who defend Ukrainian lands every day while the Russian army rapes our women and girls.
We consider this journalistic material to be in violation of journalistic standards and ethics, and we call on:
1) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to immediately give an editorial assessment of this article, recognize its non-compliance with ethics, and withdraw it from publication.
2) If the editorial office has an ombudsman institution, the editorial office should submit this case for its consideration. In the absence of such an internal institution, refer the case to the press councils of the jurisdiction.
3) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) should not become an instrument of Russian propaganda and should prevent cases of romanticization and normalization of rape by the military of the aggressor state of Russia.
Ukrainian Women Lawyers Association “JurFem”
NGO “Women in Media”
Civil Alliance “Women’s Political Action”
Hromadske Radio
The National Union of Journalists of Ukraine
First Social News Channel (Lutsk)
Expert resource “Gender in Detail”
NGO “SEMA Ukraine”
NGO “Ukrainian Institute of Media and Communication”
Commission on Journalism Ethics (CJE)
