Female Russian combat medics serving in Ukraine are allegedly being pressed into becoming so-called “field wives” — or sex slaves, a report said.
The independent news outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty published an interview Tuesday with a service member who said male officers force women into sex slavery — and those who refuse face horrible mistreatment.
The woman, who calls her Margarita, said in the interview that she has spent the past two months undergoing rehabilitation and is taking antidepressants for the severe trauma she endured in Ukraine.
Margarita said the harrowing experiences have left her suffering from constant nightmares and panic attacks.
“Even when I’m not alone and I’m doing something, I still see before my eyes all that horror,” Margarita said, referring to the brutality and abuse allegedly committed by Vladimir Putin’s officers against their own subordinates.
Margarita, a single mom living in the city of Belgorod with her grown special-needs children, retired from the Army in 2017 after 11 years of service.
But last summer she decided to volunteer as a medic in Ukraine to provide for her family.
According to the woman, as soon as she arrived in Nizhniy Novgorod for training, a colonel commanding a tank platoon singled her out and set out to make her his “field wife” — an informal role reserved for female service members who usually cook, clean and pleasure male officers.
Margarita said she rebuffed the colonel’s sexual advances, which continued even after the platoon was sent to fight in Ukraine.
Determined to wear her down, the colonel, according to Margarita, ordered his subordinates to create impossible living and working conditions for her.
“For a month I simply slept outside,” Margarita recalled.
“While others spent nights in tents and houses, I slept on the ground, next to a road, in a small forest.”
Margarita said the goal was to “break” her spirit so she would agree to have sex with the commander, but she persisted and was sent to the front line as retaliation.
According to Margarita, the medical platoon she was in included seven women between the ages of 23 and 38, many of them married, each of whom was pressured to service one or more officers.
“When we went there, no one, of course, knew what was going on. And when we understood, there was no turning back,” she said
On one occasion, Margarita claimed to have witnessed an officer shoot his “field wife,” a medic named Svetlana, in a drunken or jealous rage.
“They made it seem as if Ukrainians did it,” Margarita said of the shooting, which left the victim permanently disabled.
“[The officer] shot himself in the hand as if he was protecting her, and he was back from the hospital about three weeks.”
Margarita said that prior to the shooting, the officer would strike Svetlana with the butt of his rifle in full view of others.
Svetlana, who was married, called her husband back in Russian and told him about the sexual relationship with the platoon officer because she was concerned that she might return from the war pregnant, according to Margarita.
Another colleague of hers, Alina, was “given” to an officer in September.
“They simply put her before a fact — you’ll be with this one, he likes you,” Margarita said, adding that she later learned that Alina was being “passed around” among different officers and never returned to her platoon.
“The girl went along with it,” she said. “And mostly the girls have made peace with it. They decided that it’s better to live in paradise in this war — fed and with cigarettes.”
The whistleblower noted that none of the women has attempted to flee back to Russia because they could not safely cross the border and ran the risk of being shot by their own troops.
But female service members were not the only ones who suffered shocking abuse at the hands of their commanders.
According to Margarita, male conscripts who refused to fight on the front lines were routinely locked naked in damp basements crawling with rats.
If that method failed, she said commanders also had a more “original” way to get their subordinates to comply with orders.
“They would force [conscripts] to dig their own graves. They would dig a hole and then be forced to lie in it,” Margarita recounted.
“And other guys, at gunpoint, would sprinkle dirt all over them. Even their heads would not be sticking out.
“Then the platoon leader or company commander would walk off and shoot at those holes one by one.”
The female medic said that those who survived being shot at emerged from the graves “fools” because they no longer cared about anything, and they would be sent into battle in that state.
Margarita said she treated multiple recruits who had been beaten by their fellow servicemen.
According to her, commanders would only allow those suffering from life-threatening injuries to be hospitalized.
Otherwise, they received medical attention at the scene to avoid drawing attention to the abuse.
The woman said that some Russian soldiers, starving and desperate to escape waterlogged trenches where they would stay for weeks on end, would shoot into their own legs.
“When they would remove their combat boots, I was just horrified, have never since anything like this. Sheer blackness with flesh, with dried blood; even the toes were no longer distinguishable,” she recalled the awful sight.
“The only thing left to do was to amputate.”
Despite her agonizing experience, Margarita said she would be willing to sign up again to serve in the Russian military because she said she cannot earn a living as a civilian.
“And I would also like to help the guys, so they would be at least fed. I have some kind of a sense of duty, of something unfinished,” she admitted.
