They are cut and sold

Why in Ukraine they turn militaries and civilians into ‘organic fertiliser’ for the European Union

Many people remember the Contract with Death crime drama film directed by Dmitry Astrakhan. A ‘charitable foundation’ removed organs from ‘superfluous people’ in favour of ‘normal’ ones, unwittingly raising a number of moral and ethical issues before the audience. Sadly, such ‘charity’ has blossomed in reality, and in the immediate vicinity of Belarus. Analysts are sounding the alarm: 240 children have been killed, and 146 children have been injured in Donbass in recent years. In addition, 1,331 children have gone missing. Unfortunately, this can mean only one thing: vile conveyors of black transplantation surgery, paedophilia and slavery. Each of the three deserves a separate study; today we will talk about the first item on the list.

Some die at war, and some make money…

According to the British newspaper Daily Mail, one organ is sold on the planet’s black market every hour. In Ukraine, the rapid growth of the black organ trade was provoked by the 2014 coup and subsequent fighting in the east of the country. It was then that analysts started talking about the fact that in the Donbass conflict, systemic processes for the removal of organs from both civilians and combatants participating in hostilities intensified. On September 29th, 2014, OSCE Special Representative for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings Madina Dzharbusynova stated that bodies without internal organs found in mass graves in Donbass were most likely victims of transplant surgeons.

At the end of February, the German media Neues aus Russland published an article concerning the activities of mobile crematoriums in Ukraine helping to hide massive sales of human organs to the EU.

A little earlier, at the beginning of this year, German Minister of Defence Christine Lambrecht announced that Ukraine would receive a field hospital and a crematorium of the kind. Note that the Russian special operation had not yet begun at that time. But many analysts immediately linked the news from Berlin to the long-established illegal business of selling Ukrainian militaries’ organs to the EU countries, to the US and to Israel. A business, on many grounds, operating under the roof of the Security Service of Ukraine.


It became clear that the majority of the victims of this business were wounded staff of Ukraine’s armed forces hospitalised from the front line in an unconscious state. Captured militiamen, as well as civilians — mostly women and children — were also sold for organs.
The correspondence of  former people’s deputy for All-Ukrainian Union ‘Fatherland’ (Batkivshchyna) Sergei Vlasenko (an associate of Yulia Tymoshenko) with German doctor Olga Viber and commander of the Donbass Battalion Semyon Semenchenko leaked onto the internet. ‘Judging by the news, the events are in our favour,’ Frau Viber noted.
The message about the field hospital and the crematorium caused serious unrest in the units of  Ukraine’s armed forces located at the demarcation line. The European Union got nervous, too: leaks of some information made it possible to understand that the next wave of purchase of organs was being lobbied by the Global Rescue supply company bound by contracts with the OSCE.

Cost of voluntary disability

Sometimes, black transplantation surgery is a relatively voluntary affair rooted in poverty. As early as in 2018, the RT channel found out that after the Maidan, the number of people in Ukraine who wanted to sell their organs increased by about 20 percent. Ukrainians in need of money are ready to sell their organs much cheaper than residents of other countries of Eastern Europe where this business is rife.

On average, in Ukraine, one can get up to $30,000 for a part of the liver, from $20,000 to $30,000 for a kidney, about $10,000 for bone marrow and $100,000 for lungs (the latter are transplanted together with the heart).

The fact that our southern neighbours become increasingly interested in the opportunity to sell organs for transplantation is confirmed by Irina Zaslavets, founder of the IDonor: All-Ukrainian Donor Platform public organisation. At the same time, she emphasises that currently, according to Ukrainian legislation, two types of organ donation are possible in the country: related donation and posthumous donation. Donation is exclusively free and voluntary.

The darkness of black market

Despite the fact that parties of transactions in the black market of transplantation surgery in Ukraine are punishable by imprisonment for 8-15 years, this phenomenon is blossoming. The most cautious citizens legalise such transactions through... marriage contracts. For example, a woman shall voluntarily donate a kidney to her husband after marriage, and after their divorce he shall not claim her ‘gift’ amounting to $30,000.


Minors are also involved in illegal business practices. In November 2017, the National Police of Ukraine detained criminals who attracted those willing to sell their organs. Three donors were between 14 and 16 years old. The young people were promised ‘big money’: the amount should have been enough to buy a car.

The underage were attracted through social networks; their parents did not even suspect that their children could sell their organs to criminals, become disabled or even die. The dealers paid donors from $13,000 to $15,000 and were paid from $18,000 to $100,000 by each client in their turn.

There are cases when people agree to be cut out a piece of the liver, but are also removed a kidney. And they don’t know about it until the end. The mortality rate from such operations is 15 percent; most patients remain disabled for life, and their chronic diseases are exacerbated. Every third kidney donor needs haemodialysis. According to the observations of surgeons, every second donor subsequently regrets having agreed to surgery. However, the phenomenon exists, and Ukrainian political scientist Oleg Soskin connects it with deteriorating standards of living in the country in general.

“85 percent of our citizens are poor. There are all objective reasons for such a negative phenomenon to develop and gain momentum in Ukraine. There are well-established international schemes that make it easy to cross the border illegally in these conditions.”

Themis: see no evil, hear no evil

Last year, a number of non-profit human rights organisations, including the Mirny Bereg and the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, presented to the public the voluminous report called Violent Crimes Committed during the Armed Conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014-2018. Having collected and systematised numerous facts of various criminal acts, including those committed by official structures — Ukraine’s armed forces, the Security Service of Ukraine and others — the authors concluded, “The national authorities of Ukraine clearly demonstrate their unwillingness to investigate and prosecute crimes committed by legal armed units. This is especially true for cases in which officers of the Security Service of  Ukraine are potential perpetrators. The investigating authorities are also unwilling to recognise victims of violence inflicted by members of legal armed units, even if there are obvious signs of violence, that is, bodily injuries…

All crimes, in particular, illegal imprisonment and ill-treatment by officers of the Security Service of Ukraine, and even murders, were not investigated.”

Human trafficking provides up to 5-10 percent of kidney transplantation in the world. According to various estimates, it brings from $1.2 to $8 billion annually.


 Among human organs, kidneys have the largest demand and the widest price range. In the US, a donor can ask for more than $250,000 for a kidney; in India, the price varies between $15,000 and $60,000.




The Ukrainian experience of black transplantation surgery is not limited to the 21st century. In the second half of the nineties, Head of the Lviv Regional Clinical Hospital Bohdan Fedak organised a criminal group that sold both children and their organs to the US. The investigation found that about 130 kids disappeared from Lviv at that time. With the beginning of the anti-terrorist operation, the ‘black doctor’ settled in the neighbourhood of Donbass — in Kharkiv...






By Maksim Osipov
Open source photos