Specific Issues of Sexual Violence During the Armed Aggression Against Ukraine

The article is devoted to the study of conflict-related sexual violence during armed aggression against the state, which is equivalent to the destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, religious group as such, which is a component of a crime against humanity. The Russian invaders have created many victims of criminal offences against peace, human security and international law and order, life and health, humanity, personal integrity and freedom. The relevance of the study is to highlight and analyse sexual violence during a full-scale invasion, as the number of cases of such acts is increasing every day. At present, our law enforcement agencies and courts cannot control the temporarily occupied territories, which creates favourable conditions for committing criminal offences against sexual freedom and personal integrity. An attempt is made to study the impact of military operations of the armed conflict of such socially dangerous acts on the most vulnerable groups of the population, including monitoring of human rights violations, in particular, against women and children. These groups require special conditions that are difficult to provide during hostilities, especially with regard to pregnancy and maternity, as well as risks such as human trafficking and genocidal violence. The authors expresses concern over the fact that the issue of so-called ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ remains relevant even in the twenty-first century, especially in the context of our country. The authors believe that such crimes should be regarded as violations against humanity due to their extreme cruelty, massive scale and intentional nature, which poses a serious threat to the humanitarian situation both in our country and in the world as a whole. Keywords: sexual violence, violent acts of a sexual nature, rape or other forms of sexual violence, genocide, armed aggression, crime of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity.