Decolonizing Russia’s Sexualized Violence in Its War against Ukraine

• In Event: Gender and Decolonization: Perspectives from Social Movements and Governance in Russia and Beyond after the Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

In the first stages of Russia’s full-scale invasion, commanders condoned or even encouraged rapes, with a “an even clearer pattern…of organized sexual abuse in the detention facilities run by Russian troops, police officers and security forces” (Gall and Boushnak 2023). This paper is from the perspective of a Russianist with expertise in Russia’s long-term failure to take gendered violence seriously (working with a Ukrainian student emigre). The first goal is to bring Russia’s use of violence abroad into a reexamination of this history from a decolonial feminist perspective in order to hold Russia fully accountable. Russia is the only postcommunist country in Central and Eastern Europe not to have passed legislation against domestic violence, one of the few that hasn’t passed gender equality legislation, and one of many that haven’t ratified the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention against gendered and domestic violence. The second goal is to put Russia’s use of this violence in the context of feminist political science and international legal analysis of the use of sexualized and gendered violence in conflict generally. To do so, we will be analyzing the existing documentation of Russia’s gendered violence in Ukraine since 2014 from human rights observers, doing an online study of Ukrainian (feminist and human rights responses (e.g. following Telegram and YouTube channels), and conducting online interviews with activists and providers in Ukraine in English, Russian, and/or Ukrainian languages in efforts of gaining a better perspective.

Author

• Janet Elise Johnson, CUNY Brooklyn College