'Stop Raping Us': Woman Strips On Cannes Red Carpet To Protest Sexual Violence In Ukraine By Russian Troops

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last month that investigators had received reports of "hundreds of cases of rape" in areas previously occupied by Russian troops.

Woman at Cannes Film Festival being escorted by security guards. (Image Source: Getty)

New Delhi: A woman stunned guests at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday, when she stripped to her underwear revealing her painted body in the colours of the Ukrainian flag with the words "Stop Raping Us" in a solo protest. Wearing her red-stained underpants she began screaming at the cameras and posing for the cameras before the security guards escorted her. Her stunt interrupted the red carpet walk of people attending the premiere of the film "Three Thousand Years of Longing" by George Miller.

The woman had blood-red paint over her lower back and legs with the word 'SCUM' written on her back. The Hollywood Reporter reported that the woman stripped off all of her clothes as she fell to her knees screaming in front of the assembled photographers, as per eyewitnesses. The woman was protesting against the sexual assaults by Russian soldiers who are using rape as a weapon on women and children, especially in villages of previously Russia-owned Kharkiv.

According to an AFP report, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last month investigators had received reports of "hundreds of cases of rape" in areas previously occupied by Russian troops, including sexual assaults on small children.

Several reports are received by Ukrainian authorities about sexual assaults taking place in Kharkiv. On May 20, the Defence of Ukraine tweeted that they received almost 60 reports of rape from Kharkiv including two 10-year-old boys and a 1-year-old boy who died of his injuries.

🇺🇦 Ombudswoman: Today, in just one hour, 10 reports of rape by the 🇷🇺 occupiers, including 8 children, were received from newly liberated villages in the Kharkiv region. Yesterday - 56 reports.
Among the children: two 10-year-old boys and a 1-year-old boy who died of his injuries

— Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU) May 19, 2022

Zelenskyy who is a former actor, in a video message, urged young filmmakers to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin as Charlie Chaplin satirised Adolf Hitler in the film “The Great Dictator” in the early years of World War II.

"We need a new Chaplin who will demonstrate that the cinema of our time is not silent." He further requested that cinema be “on the side of freedom”, added Zelenskyy while making an appeal to world cinema to stand with Ukraine.