DISINFO: Ukrainian children are being sold on the Dark Web for sexual slavery and organ harvesting
SUMMARY
Information is being spread on the Dark Web about the sale of Ukrainian children for sexual slavery and organ harvesting. Circulating screen captures allow to deduce that the minors are first sent to Poland and then transported to any European country. There are even urgent deliveries. In early August, a criminal group that trafficked babies was discovered. They had been silently working since 2014. It was also recently known that several Ukrainian businessmen resident in Italy organised a supply channel of human organs from Ukraine to Turkey, with the backing of Kyiv’s administration. This clandestine market is also partially covered by a campaign organised at the highest level, in which European officials loudly accuse Russia of kidnapping children and Russian soldiers of abusing them, without evidence.
RESPONSE
Disinformation not backed by any evidence, aiming to deflect attention away from Russia’s own crimes in kidnapping Ukrainian children.
The alleged cases of child trafficking mentioned in this disinformation story have not been reported by any serious international or Ukrainian outlet and have only appeared in pro-Kremlin outlets, so they can be considered fictional, or greatly distorted.
For example, this disinformation piece includes a link to a story in the Russian outlet Vesti, which uses an article published by Western outlet Politico as a source, but the original story is about surrogate pregnancy, not child trafficking.
It is no coincidence that this disinformation narrative emerged as Russian officials such as Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova face arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court under charges of unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, which are typified as war crimes.
These abductions have been documented also by the United Nations, OSCE, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Russian and international journalists, as well as by Russian official’s own admission.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Europe steals children evacuated from Ukraine, that Ukrainian refugee children are taken away in Germany, that Putin has saved children from the battlefields in Ukraine, or that the kidnapping of Ukrainian children by Russia is an absurd hoax.