Trump’s peace plan includes an amnesty for all actions during the war, but victims in Ukraine are urging Britain to support prosecutions
Christina Lamb
December 13, 2025
The Sunday Times
When the Ukrainian documentary-maker Alisa Kovalenko read President Trump’s peace plan, one image flashed through her mind. “I saw the face of Ludmyla, a 75-year-old teacher from a small village near Kherson,” she said. “A Russian soldier came to her house in May 2022, smashed her face with his rifle butt and broke her teeth, slashed her stomach with a knife, and raped her. He then stole her bicycle and left her a Kalashnikov bullet as a souvenir.”
While there has been a frenzy of diplomatic activity across Europe in the past fortnight since the unveiling of Trump’s Russian-backed 28-point plan, the focus has been on negotiating over concessions that would force Ukraine to cede territory to Moscow and a ban on it joining Nato. To many Ukrainians, however, even more alarming is the proposal of a blanket amnesty for all parties for actions during the war, which would mean pardoning Russian perpetrators of rape. “How can you look in the eyes of this 75-year-old woman and say there won’t be punishment for what that Russian soldier did to you?” said Kovalenko, her own eyes wet with tears.
The 38-year-old from Zaporizhzhia was one of a group of four Ukrainian survivors of sexual violence and activists who came to London last week to lobby MPs, members of the House of Lords, and Foreign Office officials to try to get British support against the proposed amnesty.
Talks continue over the weekend in Berlin before a meeting with European leaders and President Zelensky on Monday. The US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will also be present, as will Sir Keir Starmer.
Kovalenko and the other women also met the Duchess of Edinburgh, a leading campaigner against sexual violence in conflict and the first member of the royal family to visit Ukraine during the war. The duchess spoke at a screening of Traces, a moving documentary made by Kovalenko featuring six women, including Ludmyla, who have been raped by Russian forces since the full invasion in 2022. “They didn’t kill me but they broke me,” says one.
Kovalenko was one of the first Ukrainian women to speak out publicly about her own ordeal after she was held captive by a Russian intelligence officer in the Donbas in 2014. He forced her to undress and bathe in front of him as he cleaned his gun, then raped her. “There’s no room for indifference on this issue,” said Melanne Verveer, executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, which brought the women to London. Verveer used to be US ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues. “Russia has been systematically using sexual violence as part of its genocidal campaign to subjugate and destroy Ukraine and also as a form of torture in detention centres,” she added. “We brought these women here to raise awareness and to stress the need for accountability for these crimes in peace negotiations. There is no place for
amnesty for the perpetrators.” “Justice is not just a word,” said Irina Dovhan, 63, who runs the Ukrainian branch of Sema, a global survivors’ network. “For survivors it’s the most important thing.”
Like Kovalenko, Dovhan is a victim of sexual violence during conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Then running a beauty salon in Donetsk, she was caught taking food to Ukrainian fighters and was locked up by the Vostok Brigade, a notorious pro-Russian separatist unit. “They accused me of being an artillery-spotter and tortured me, raped me and beat me,” she said. “Then they wrapped me in a Ukrainian flag, tied me to a post in the square wearing a placard saying ‘I’m a child killer’ and passers-by came and beat me and spat at me.”
A photograph of her pillorying appeared in The New York Times, prompting international outcry, and she was released and fled to Kyiv. But, like Kovalenko — who turned her ordeal into a play which she performed in Ukraine and Germany before revealing it was true, only to find people disbelieving — Dovhan struggled to get people to listen. “Even though I had visible scars, no one told me this could be documented or gave any support,” she said. “In 2016 a prosecutor finally called me to take evidence but when I told him about the rape he freaked out and said ‘your dignity has been compromised’ and forced me to leave. It was so traumatising. My own country didn’t care.” “This is why lots of women didn’t testify,” agreed Kovalenko. “It was a circle of hell.”
Eventually, in 2019, Dovhan went to the Hague to testify and met Dr Denis Mukwege, the Nobel prize-winning Congolese gynaecologist whose Panzi Hospital has treated more rape victims than anywhere on earth. He encouraged her to set up a Ukrainian branch of Sema, his network for survivors. One of the first to join was Kovalenko.
Soon after the full-scale invasion in February 2022, they began hearing of similar ordeals under Russian occupation and started travelling to liberated areas around Kyiv, recording testimony, then to Kherson when it was recaptured. “It’s always rape with extreme violence and they are using it as a weapon to humiliate and try to kill our resilience,” said Kovalenko.
There are 384 Ukrainians who have registered rape cases with prosecutors but this is thought to be a fraction of the true total number of victims. “We know it’s much bigger, there are thousands,” said Dovhan. “Most stayed silent because there is so much stigma.”
They run an awareness project and travel into communities around Ukraine, encouraging women to come forward. “There isn’t a village where we don’t find a victim,” said Kovalenko. “But we are breaking the wall of silence and our voices are getting louder.”
They also travelled to the United Nations in New York in March, with a group of male survivors, to try to get Russia included in the so-called List of Shame of parties responsible for sexual violence in the annual report by the special representative of the UN secretary-general. To their frustration, Russia was only given a warning. “It’s absolutely logical to include Russia on this list,” said Kateryna Levchenko, Ukraine’s commissioner for gender equality, who was part of the delegation to London. She pointed out that there are also many male victims. “As many as 70 per cent of prisoners of war suffered sexual violence,” she said.
Ukrainian organisations for survivors are struggling to continue their work amid cuts in aid budgets, and called on British officials involved in redrafting the peace plan to not allow any kind of amnesty for Russian soldiers who have shattered so many lives.
“Peace cannot be at the price of justice,” Kovalenko said. “I want everyone thinking about any kind of amnesty to think about Ludmyla and remember the kind of crimes [the Russians] carried out.”
Oleksandra Matviichuk, who leads the Centre for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, which won the Nobel peace prize in 2022, has warned of the global implications of failing to prosecute war crimes in Ukraine. “It would ruin international law and create a precedent that would encourage other authoritarian leaders to think that you can invade a country, kill people and erase their identity, and you will be rewarded with new territories,” she said.
Christina Lamb is one of Britain’s leading foreign correspondents and a best-selling author, best known for her reporting on what war does to women. Since an unexpected wedding invitation took her to Pakistan at the age of 21, she has covered conflicts all over the world, winning 16 major awards including a Lifetime Achievement award from the Society of Editors last year as well as Foreign Correspondent of the Year for the sixth time. She was appointed OBE in 2013. She has written ten books including the global best-seller I Am Malala with Malala Yousafzai.