Arthur Greene
After facing the terrible ordeal of fleeing the Russian invasion of their country, many Ukrainian women also have to escape dangerous sex traffickers as they cross the border.
Investigators have uncovered a criminal syndicate who lure women in with the offer of legitimate work before forcing them to carry out sex work in a foreign country.
The leader of the operation was arrested by Ukrainian authorities following a months-long operation.
The investigation initially led authorities to one of the victims, a 21-year-old mother of one who lost her job because of the war. She was desperately looking for work to support her young son when she was offered what she thought was a legitimate job in Istanbul.
Her plan was to cross the Ukrainian border into Hungary. From there she would travel to Austria before boarding a flight to Turkey.
Investigators managed to stop her before she left Ukraine.
“With the detectives, we decided to intervene,” Oleh Tkalenko, a senior prosecutor who led the investigation, told the Guardian.
“We stopped the woman at the border. Her vulnerable condition was clear: absence of money, a child to support, overall financial difficulties because of the war. The ringleader we were surveilling had bought her tickets, given her some money and organised her route.”
With the woman’s evidence, Tkalenko’s team had enough to swoop in on the ringleader, a 31-year-old man who they had been keeping tabs on for months.
The man was arrested and his office raided in the Kyiv region. They found a notebook with at least 10 women’s names and nicknames listed in it, along with their working hours.
Prosecutors do not know how many women have been trafficked by the gang, but they suspect that it’s many more than the 10 listed in the notebook.
Image source: @ResisterChic
