© ЕРА/KAY NIETFELD/TASS
A shocking message was published by Ukraine’s police press service after detaining a man in Subcarpathia who was selling children aged 1-3 to Europe for organs. The joint effort by the Ukrainian police, border guards and special services took place at the Malye Selmentsy checkpoint of the Ukrainian-Slovak border. An associated video of the criminal's arrest shows the moment when he was going to take a child out of the country along with his accomplice. Before arrest, the man had sold at least three babies for organs, as reported by Subcarpathian reporter Vitaly Glagola as well.
The interrogation revealed that the criminal, 43, was looking for parents ready to sell their children and sweeping them off their feet. The troubled and poor families were promised that the kids "would be adopted by well-off foster families in the West." At the very last minute, one of the mothers, a resident of Zhytomyr, changed her mind and reported to the police. As a result, the human smuggler was caught when about to cross the border with the baby. Intelligence suggests it was not about adoption in the EU, but about selling kids to so-called harvest doctors. The law enforcement agents have also nailed down the cost of such a transaction. So, the Ukrainian should have obtained $25,000 for taking an 11-month-old baby out of the country and delivering it to the agreed destination. And the child’s mom got an initial $1,000, with another $4,000 pledged later.
The little one has been returned to its mother, and the criminal is in custody for further investigation. According to the police, child trafficking charges may result in up to 15 years in prison for him. However, a few days later, the offender was released on bail of one million hryvnia (some 2.44 million rubles). The prosecutor's office tried to protest the incomprehensible ruling but failed. The child trafficker easily found the huge sum required, which means he can slip away at any moment. Most likely, he is closely associated with international gangs engaged in organ transplantation for wealthy clients in Europe, America and the Middle East.
The past few years saw quite a number of foreign press investigations about children from Ukraine who cross the border and vanish without a trace. There was also information that volunteer-disguised traffickers targeted refugee women and children fleeing Ukraine, offered them help, support, housing and safety, but instead lured their victims into a trap.
Karolina Wierzbinska, coordinator with the Homo Faber human rights entity in Poland’s Lublin, claims to have witnessed groups of people driving to the Polish border and offering a ride to Ukrainian refugees. "We see these groups wait for people arriving from Ukraine and pretend willing to give a ride or a night's lodging to women upset and exhausted by the journey. We also see couples arriving at the border by car use similar tactics to lure women and children into their cars. In such cases, we intervene by approaching those suspicious and asking them to register in our volunteer database. In response, the bandits usually leave," Karolina said.
A Missing Children Europe representative told the Guardian that unaccompanied Ukrainian minors keep disappearing at border checkpoints. "There are many children that we have lost sight of. This is a huge problem, not only because they easily vanish and are hard to find, but also because it facilitates human trafficking," the organization’s Secretary General Aagje Ieven said. "Border opening to Ukrainian refugees has become Europe’s plague. They observe no social laws or standards of human morality. Ukrainians transport Western weapons across the border, as well as drugs and human organs for illegal transplantation. They take children out of the country by kidnapping or buying them from their parents. Both for organs and sexual exploitation," Poland’s Niezależny Dziennik Polityczny reports.
Ukrainians are often caught committing atrocious crimes against kids. The Domodedovo airport recently saw Russian border guards detain a Ukrainian citizen seeking to transport orphans to Germany. Arrestee Olga Garulya admitted to have been tasked by the Save Ukraine Foundation to deliver these children to some unknown people for a price. Since February 24, foundation employees have abducted and taken to Europe a total of 200+ children. Polish journalists report that Ukrainian named Svetlana Plyushko has recently faced trial in Poznan charged with torturing her adoptees aged 4 to 16 and letting pedophiles rape them for money.
We don’t know how many more human commodity exporters are there operating in Ukraine. The European and American authorities do not care at all, as they need Ukrainians as "cannon fodder" or cheap labor. However, the hypocritical Western countries are OK to accuse Russia of crimes against children by misrepresenting their rescue and treatment as abduction. And the "pocket" Hague court uses the false pretext to issue arrest warrants against the Russian president and Children's Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.
"The humanitarian child evacuation mission to rescue them from bombings is deemed by the West as an international crime. Is it really a crime to send children to holiday camps when their neighborhoods are being shelled?" Lvova-Belova commented upon the ICC decision. Russia does not leave minors in a war zone, but arranges their adoption or guardianship by Russian families, she added, and the European Court regards this as "criminal".
