Kherson, located just north of Crimea, was the largest Ukrainian city occupied by Russian forces following the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Images of civilians in Kherson protesting against the occupation were seen around the world. The fact that these demonstrations could take place without being suppressed raised hopes that the Russian occupation might be less brutal than many had anticipated and feared.

Those hopes were soon dashed. Before long, personnel from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) arrived, and the persecution began. Among those arrested was Oleksii Sivak, who was subjected to months of severe sexual violence in a freezing basement, including repeated electric shocks to his genitals.

After Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson and Sivak was released, he set up a support network for men who had been subjected to sexual violence in Russian captivity. He has also become an activist campaigning for better state support for male victims of sexual violence in Ukraine, and has given interviews to several major English-language media outlets. 

The coverage of sexual violence in Ukraine by these outlets is the subject of Antonella Wahl’s master’s thesis. Among other things, her research demonstrates how Sivak’s story challenges established patterns in media coverage of sexual violence.

The media tend to report on things that are both shocking and acceptable at the same time

Antonella Wahl

Most victims were male

In 2024, Ukraine passed a law granting survivors of wartime sexual violence the right to compensation. Men outnumbered women both among those who applied for compensation and those who received it. 

– Yet in the media coverage I analysed, the victims appear to be predominantly women, says Wahl.

In her master’s thesis, which recently won an award for the best master’s thesis with a gender perspective at the University of Oslo, Wahl analysed 50 articles published by The Guardian and CNN. They all covered sexual violence in Ukraine and were published after Russia’s full-scale invasion. 

Seventeen of the articles mentioned male victims of such violence. However, the analysis showed that, in most cases, sexual violence against men was still portrayed as peripheral and as less significant than sexual violence against women.

Even in these 17 articles, male victims were mentioned far less frequently than female victims; they were almost never interviewed and, unlike female victims, rarely had their stories told in detail, Wahl writes

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Hidden by whom?

Wahl found that the media often described sexual violence against men as a ‘hidden’ crime. She describes this as a paradox: 

– Both Ukrainian authorities and the UN have clearly stated that men have often been victims of sexual violence. Yet the very media outlets that describe this form of violence as a “hidden” crime are also contributing to keeping it hidden.

According to Wahl, one way the media contribute to hiding sexual violence against men is through the use of “neutral” language, language that does not identify the victims’ gender. 

– In many contexts, using “neutral” language when reporting on sexual violence can be positive, she explains. 

– But because women are seen as the typical victims of sexual violence, neutral language can also reinforce the perception that victims are almost exclusively women. In several cases, I found that articles shifted from specifically referring to female victims to using neutral language, or vice versa. This can create the impression that seemingly neutral references to victims are, in fact, referring to women.

Ideal victims

– The theory of “ideal victims” proved to be a very good fit with my findings, says Wahl.

This theory suggests that the public finds it much easier to empathise with certain types of crime victims than with others. And when it comes to sexual violence in war, Wahl argues that the cultural expectations that shape “ideal victims” contribute to the focus being placed on female victims. 

– Among other things, victims are more likely to receive empathy when they have no connection to the perpetrator and can in no way be blamed for the situation in which they became victims, Wahl explains.

– Because men in wartime are more often soldiers, this can contribute to greater empathy being directed towards women.

Wahl is also interested in what journalists consider newsworthy and why. She believes that the theory of ideal victims helps explain media coverage of sexual violence in war:

– The media tend to report on stories that are shocking yet acceptable at the same time.

This, Wahl explains, helps account for the strong focus on female victims:

– The violence is shocking, making it newsworthy, while female victims are considered “acceptable” in the sense that they fit the expectations of the ideal victim.

Breaking patterns

– Two or three of the articles I examined broke with this pattern. They focused on male victims and told their stories, says Wahl.

In two of these news articles, Oleksii Sivak was interviewed. According to Wahl, the portrayal of Sivak and two other victims challenged both conventional understandings of sexual violence in war and broader notions of masculinity. 

This was achieved by portraying Sivak as emotionally open and vulnerable, while highlighting the importance of community among male survivors as they worked to recover from the extreme trauma they had endured.

At the same time, Wahl argues that Sivak’s emergence as the foremost public representative of male victims can be seen as yet another confirmation of the theory of ideal victims.

A clear majority of these male victims are likely to be Ukrainian soldiers who have been subjected to abuse while in Russian captivity. Sivak, however, was not a soldier, but took part in civilian resistance. He therefore fits more readily than soldiers into established notions of which victims are considered deserving of empathy.

It started with Bosnia

Until the 1990s, sexual violence was largely regarded as a “natural” part of warfare, writes Wahl. This changed with the wars in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. It was also in the wake of these wars that media coverage of sexual violence in war emerged as a field of research.

One of those who became interested in sexual violence in war as a result of the conflicts of the 1990s was Inger Skjelsbæk, who completed a PhD on sexual violence during the Bosnian War and is now a professor at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Gender Research.

– I came of age as Yugoslavia was breaking apart, and that conflict dominated my time at university, says Skjelsbæk, who recently published the book Roses of Sarajevo, about the war in Bosnia and its aftermath. The book focuses on the women affected by the conflict, including Skjelsbæk herself.

The UN agenda that rendered male victims invisible

Just before Skjelsbæk began her doctoral research, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325, which established a UN agenda on Women, Peace and Security.

Antonella Wahl points out that this contributed to an understanding of sexual violence in war as something that primarily affects women. 

– But it also contributed to marginalising and rendering male victims invisible, says Wahl. 

Inger Skjelsbæk partly agrees, and explains the background in more detail:

– Women, Peace and Security was intended to ensure that women’s experiences of war became an issue for key actors, such as heads of state and international organisations. Previously, these experiences had not been regarded as such. 

– The aim was to make women’s experiences central. So the strong focus on women may well have contributed to rendering male victims of sexual violence invisible, she says.
Wahl found that the media often described sexual violence against men as a ‘hidden’ crime. She describes this as a paradox:

– Both Ukrainian authorities and the UN have clearly stated that men have often been victims of sexual violence. Yet the very media outlets that describe this form of violence as a “hidden” crime are also contributing to keeping it hidden.

According to Wahl, one way the media contribute to hiding sexual violence against men is through the use of “neutral” language, language that does not identify the victims’ gender.

– In many contexts, using “neutral” language when reporting on sexual violence can be positive, she explains.

– But because women are seen as the typical victims of sexual violence, neutral language can also reinforce the perception that victims are almost exclusively women. In several cases, I found that articles shifted from specifically referring to female victims to using neutral language, or vice versa. This can create the impression that seemingly neutral references to victims are, in fact, referring to women.

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Sexual violence as a strategic weapon?

The attention to sexual violence in Yugoslavia and Rwanda also helped establish the idea that sexual violence is so prevalent in war because parties to a conflict use it strategically as a weapon against their opponents.

– I’m not saying that’s completely wrong. But the understanding of “sexual violence as a weapon is so pervasive that it almost excludes all other ways of understanding sexual violence in war, says Wahl.

While the notion of sexual violence as a weapon of war is rarely questioned in public discourse, the picture is more nuanced in academic research.

– This has been the subject of academic debate for 20 years. In 2014, a major international summit on sexual violence in conflict was held in London. The idea of sexual violence as a weapon was front and centre at the summit. This drew considerable criticism from researchers, many of whom pointed out that sexual violence occurs in war and conflict for a variety of reasons, says Skjelsbæk.

– For example, sexual violence can be used as a rite of passage or to foster cohesion within military units. There is also considerable evidence that more nationalist military groups are more likely to perpetrate sexual violence. Military units with more female members, as well as more left-wing ideological groups, are probably less likely to perpetrate sexual violence.

In 2023, Ukrainian lawyer Kateryna Busol published an academic article titled “When the Head of State Makes Rape Jokes, His Troops Rape on the Ground”. In it, she argued that the widespread acceptance of sexual violence in Russian society more broadly, and Putin’s rhetoric about rape in particular, contributed to the Russian forces’ widespread use of sexual violence by signalling that such violence was acceptable and even expected. 

Available figures indicate that sexual violence has been perpetrated to a much greater extent by Russian forces than by Ukrainian forces. Female victims have most often been Ukrainian civilians who were assaulted amid the chaos that followed the Russian occupation of new areas early in the war. Men, by contrast, have primarily been subjected to sexual violence while in Russian captivity. A UN report concluded that sexual violence was systematic and widespread in most places where Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians were detained.

Speaking about his network of male victims of sexual violence, Oleksii Sivak told The Guardian in 2024: 

– Probably almost every man freed from captivity is part of our network. They just aren’t all aware of it.