DISINFO: Secret child trafficking network operates in Ukraine
SUMMARY
A secret network of selling children abroad has been operating in Ukraine since 2014.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative not backed by any evidence, aiming to deflect attention away from Russia’s own crimes of kidnapping Ukrainian children.
Pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets attempt to accuse Ukraine and Western countries of crimes against children, massive deportations, and organ trafficking without providing any evidence. These outlets make no mention of Russian responsibility for the massive deportation of Ukrainian civilians, including children, crimes that have been well documented.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova on charges of unlawful deportation and the 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 Ukrainian children are being sold on the Dark Web for sexual slavery and organ harvesting, that Western governments and NGOs are involved in trafficking Ukrainian children, 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, that the kidnapping of Ukrainian children by Russia is an absurd hoax, or that Russia never abducted any Ukrainian children.