Lyudmila Denisova
On June 8, the former ombudsman of Ukraine Lyudmila Denisova commented on her statements regarding the stories of rapes of Ukrainian girls by Russian soldiers. These statements were made by the former ombudsman in the Italian parliament. Denisova’s main goal was to push Italy to take bolder steps with regard to assistance to Ukraine.
It is interesting to note some of the ombudsman’s comments:
“I was talking about scary things to make the decisions that Ukraine needs.”
“Maybe I went overboard. But I was trying to achieve the goal of convincing the world to provide weapons and put pressure on Russia.”
“When I spoke in the Italian Parliament at the International Affairs Committee, I heard and saw such fatigue about Ukraine, you know? I talked about terrible things to somehow push them to make decisions that Ukraine and the Ukrainian people need.”
The former Ukrainian ombudsman claimed that women, the elderly, children, small boys and men were raped by Russian servicemen. Denisova described the gruesome cases in great details but provided no evidences. When she got to the point of raping six-month-old babies and 90-year-olds, she was asked to back up her story. But Denisova was unable to do so.
Ludmila Denisova was on a tour of European countries as a Ukrainian political official, but not as an ombudsman. At the end of May, the Verkhovna Rada removed her from her post. The Parliament gave a vote of no confidence.
The deputies had a lot of complaints against the ombudsman. Denisova was accused of negligent performance of official duties. She failed to create humanitarian corridors, protect and exchange prisoners of war, but only performed online spreading lies about the rapes and fake murders. The Rada believes that her media activities harmed Ukraine by distracting the attention of the world media from the real needs of the country. In the Rada, 234 deputies voted for her resignation. She was also added to the Ukrainian base “Peacemaker” for discrediting the Ukrainian government in the world.
Denisova’s fakes about the Russian army were designed not only for Europeans, they were actively spread in the Russian social media in an attempt to provoke mass protests against the Russian military operation.
The lies created by the former Ukrainian ombudsman were supported by foreign officials and as a result became the basis of the western propaganda against the Russian military, which in turn was rarely claimed on the official level.
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield also repeated the story , claiming that Russian soldiers were raping Ukrainian civilians. Thomas-Greenfield also mentioned that the constant rape of civilians by the Russian military was filmed on video, but neither the Ukrainian nor the American sides had any footage to support these claims. There is no material evidence at all.
Also, Darya Gerasimchuk, the Ukrainian president’s commissioner for children’s rights, said on the Polish Belsat TV channel that there were no confirmed cases of violence against Ukrainian children.
On June 6, the Russian Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, commented on the issue. The Russian position was simple: Denisova repeatedly lied without evidence about the “atrocities” of the Russian military.
