Russian who served in Ukraine says female medics from her unit were used as sex slaves for high-ranking officers

By Sinead Baker

On March 20, 2023

• Russian officers expected female medics to sexually please them, according to a new report.
• Those who refused were punished, one woman who served in the Russian army said.
• She said she was made to sleep outside for a month after she refused to sleep with a colonel.

A Russian service member deployed to Ukraine said that high-ranking officers used female medics in their own military as sex slaves, and punished those who did not cooperate.

The soldier, identified as Margarita, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that female medics in her unit were made into “field wives” who were required to cook and clean for platoon officers, as well as “please” them sexually, according to a translation by The Daily Beast.

She said that officers tried to get her to be one of these field wives for a colonel, but that she refused. She learned that commanders were ordered to “severely punish” her as a result.

“For a month I just lived outside. When others spent the night in tents and houses, I slept on the ground, near the road, in a small forest … They wanted to break me so that I would agree to sleep with [the colonel],” she said, according to The Daily Beast’s translation.

Margarita said she saw the military try to “place” seven other women with platoon commanders. 

One woman who was made to be a “field wife” was left permanently disabled after the officer shot her while drunk, Margarita said, adding: “They arranged it to look like the Ukrainians had done it.”

Other female service members were forced to sleep with multiple men, she said.

One colleague of hers was “passed around,” Margarita added, and afterwards an officer told her: “We cashed in on Alinka, so let’s cash in on you too!” per The Daily Beast.

Punishments were part of military life in Ukraine, Margarita said.

She said that soldiers who didn’t want to fight on the front lines were also punished. This included getting them naked and putting them in cold basements filled with rats.

If this didn’t work, the soldiers were made to dig and lie in their own graves, and were then covered in dirt. The leader of the unit would then “shoot at random around the grave.”

“Goodbye to anyone he hit, and anyone who survived is already crawling out of this hole like a fool,” she said.

Margarita, who volunteered for the war in Ukraine after previously serving in Russia’s army until 2017, spoke after returning home to Russia.

She said that since returning she’d been in rehabilitation, and had experienced nightmares and panic attacks, and had struggled to adjust back to civilian life.

Russian soldiers have been accused of sexual assault and rape against Ukrainians during the conflict. A war crimes investigator said last November that in some cases Russian commanders had ordered their troops to commit sexual violence in Ukraine.

This piece was republished from the Business Insider.