Lyudmila Denisova, the Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for Human Rights has been fired over her handling of reports detailing sexual assault allegations made against Russians in Ukraine.
According to NewsWeek, Ukrainian media outlets and journalists signed an open letter requesting that reports concerning rape and sexual assault be “published with caution,” particularly when involving children, according to an English translation of the letter. journalists indicated how reports from Denisova went into great detail about the alleged rape of children, some as young as 6 months old, by Russian soldiers.
Denisova had received international news coverage by Western media outlets with her stories about mass rape committed by Russian soldiers.
CNN published a story based on Denisova’s claims, of Russia using rape as a “tool of war” on May 10th, and even prior to that, Business Insider shared Denisova’s detailed reports of rape incidents on April 27th reported theEuropeanConservative.
After being removed from office, Denisova has since given an interview to the Ukrainian outlet LB.ua, in which she admits having “maybe
exaggerated” in her stories, but justifies her decision as follows:
“I spoke in the Italian parliament at the Committee on International Affairs; I heard and saw such fatigue from Ukraine, you know? I talked about terrible things in order to somehow push them to make the decisions that Ukraine and the Ukrainian people need. There is a party, “Five Stars,” which was against the provision of weapons to us, but after my speech, one of the party leaders expressed support for Ukraine; said that they [would provide] support, including the provision of weapons. I conveyed everything that the applicants wanted to say to society and the world; that the enemies, the Russian Federation, [should] be punished.”
She went on to admit that her claims were not entirely truthful: “Yes, then this vocabulary was very harsh … I said that, indeed, maybe I exaggerated. But I tried to achieve the goal of convincing the world to provide weapons and pressure Russia.”
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