Captured Russian soldier sentenced to 12 years for raping civilian woman in Donetsk Oblast
A Ukrainian court sentenced a Russian serviceman to 12 years in prison for repeatedly raping a civilian woman over two months in a village in Donetsk Oblast's Pokrovsk district. He was captured by Ukrainian forces in December 2025.
A court in Donetsk Oblast has sentenced a Russian serviceman to 12 years in prison for repeatedly raping a civilian woman in a village in the Pokrovsk district, Ukraine's Office of the Prosecutor General reported.
The 50-year-old man, from Russia's Sverdlovsk Oblast, had previously spent 32 years imprisoned for robbery and armed robbery. While serving that sentence, he signed a contract with the Russian Armed Forces and joined the 114th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade of the 51st Guards Combined Arms Army as a rifleman.
In September 2025, he entered a village in the Pokrovsk district as part of a small infantry group. Together with two other Russian servicemen, he occupied the basement of a house where two local civilians — a woman and a man — were sheltering from attacks. The man was killed in one of the strikes, leaving the woman alone with three armed Russian servicemen with no means of defending herself or escaping the basement.
According to law enforcement, one of the servicemen began sexually assaulting her in early October. The court established that the abuse became systematic and continued for about two months, with the perpetrator threatening to kill her if she resisted.
Ukrainian forces captured the serviceman in December 2025, putting an end to the abuse. He pleaded not guilty at trial, but the court found him guilty of a war crime — ill-treatment of civilians under Article 438.1 of Ukraine's Criminal Code — and sentenced him to 12 years in prison.
