cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/31226135

[This is a piece by Dr. Kerry McElroy, cultural historian and founder of The Sága Project: An International Women’s Journalism and Oral History Collective.]

In 2022, numerous phone calls were intercepted between Russian soldiers and wives and girlfriends about raping Ukrainian women. Roman Bykovsky and wife Olga Bykovska went viral on one such call, in which the wife laughingly encouraged her husband to rape Ukrainian women as long as he used a condom.

From the first year of the war into the second and third, the greatest site of sexual war crimes has moved from civilian young women to male POWs. One of the favorite “games” of the occupying Russians has involved spinning the wheel of the field telephone then making a call, electrocuting the prisoner connected to its wire. It has varied genital electrocution, known as “Zelensky’s Call”, with anal electrocution, known as “Biden’s Call”.

[…]