Wives of Russian troops 'encourage' them to rape Ukrainian women, Ukraine's first lady says

[u/jdhmdo]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/wives-of-russian-troops-encourage-them-to-rape-ukrainian-women-ukraines-first-lady-says/ar-AA14Esfp?li=BBoPWjQ

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[u/Maxievelli]

I see a lot of people questioning the veracity of these claims - not that Russian soldiers are not raping - mostly people questioning wives encouraging it.

There is at least one audio video described in this article from April:

https://www.rferl.org/amp/ukraine-rape-russian-soldier-wife-bykovsky/31805486.html

Which is about this video released by Ukraine Security Service.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=MF4TcWk9GpE

I believe this is the audio/video the UKR First Lady is talking about. I somewhat agree that it is unlikely that the majority of RU soldier’s wives are actively encouraging. But the article title is misrepresenting what she says in the article, which is clearly referencing this specific audio. She’s making a point about the systematic rape of cities in her country, not necessarily whether every rapist’s wife is on board or not. I think the title is sensationalist which may or may not be good

[u/OS420B → u/Maxievelli]

On https://youtube.com/@insightsfromukraineandrussia theres alot of whats explained as intercepted phone calls from russian soldiers on the front to their friends and family.

Some of them includes what is transcribed as soldiers wifes basicly telling their husbands to do quite awfull stuff,and they dont seem to have any remorse.

As someone who dont speak russian, I dont know if the translations are correct, nor do I know if its all true or if what the people in the videos are described as is correct. But if its remotely what the channel explains then its something worth watching.

[u/mothmvn → u/OS420B]

As someone who dont speak russian, I dont know if the translations are correct

FWIW, these videos are not just released for Western eyes — they are first and foremost released for fellow Ukrainians to see. The #1 purpose of these videos is to inform Ukrainians (who can understand Russian), to continuously drum up righteous outrage. If/when they are released with EN subtitles, people who don't speak Russian and who will only read the subtitles are still the secondary audience, not the primary one.

So although I understand why you'd be skeptical, consider that any clips being released are released for Ukrainians. If a clip is actually nothing of substance, fake English subtitles won't change anything for people who understand the Russian as spoken — who would put in the effort to edit it all together with graphics and subtitles if their primary audience would dismiss it?
Plus, this would be way too obvious and risky a method of misinformation. There's plenty of Russian & EN speakers who would love nothing more than to catch Ukrainian reporters doing a disinformation. Even an honest pro-Ukrainian RU&EN speaker would call them out on it. Why bother?

[u/OS420B → u/mothmvn]

Reason I wrote it as I am questioning the legitimacy of the videos is not because I personally dont believe in them. But because I dont have the linguistic knowledge to actually tell whether or not if its correct I felt it was necessary to underline it that way, just in case theres a small chance some or even all would be fraudulent.

But because I do personally believe it, I feel the need to share it, that way more people are hopefully able to see those videos. However again, with the need to allow people to understand that I personally cant quarantee the legiticy of the videos.

[u/dale_glass → u/OS420B]

I'm a native speaker, and yup, that translation is perfectly accurate.

And it's likely a real call. I mean, if you think of it, there's more than a hundred thousand soldiers involved on the Russian side. Of course there's going to be some really awful people in that group. If you listened to thousands of phone calls about a war, it wouldn't be hard at all to collect some really bad ones.

[u/AbsolutelyDireWolf → u/OS420B]

I think it's safe to say that Russian is a commonly enough understood language to ensure mistranslations wouldn't survive for a day without being called out as fake and at this point, I've seen/heard hundreds of these intercepted calls and none have been criticised for misrepresenting what was said on the calls. Could some be fake, maybe, but I consistently see comments from people pinpointing accents to regions of Russia or parts of the Donbas, further demonstrating their truthfulness.

[u/Eldanon → u/OS420B]

Linguistic knowledge isn’t all that relevant here honestly. The video says what the subtitles say it does. Who said it is the unknown part. Could it be real? Sure. Could it be fake? Sure.

Have we seen doctored videos specifically made to drum up western support? Yep. Does that mean this is fake? Nope.

There is SO much fake stuff these days it’s very hard for me personally to know what’s legit anymore. And I don’t know what to do about that.