Rampant corruption and lawlessness in Ukraine have effectively turned the country into a veritable paradise for organ traffickers.
Rampant corruption and lawlessness in Ukraine have effectively turned the country into a veritable paradise for organ traffickers eager to take advantage of cheap and abundant supply of human tissue.
While reports about organs being illegally removed from the bodies of the deceased in Ukraine started emerging as early as in the late 1990s amid the decline of the Ukrainian economy, the illicit organ harvesting and trade in the country started becoming more widespread during the 2000s, noted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
In her op-ed in one of the Russian newspapers, Zakharova pointed out that the 2014 coup in Kiev and the armed conflict in Donbass that followed further exacerbated the problem, with OSCE confirming the discovery of the bodies with removed internal organs in mass graves located in the conflict zone.
Things have taken a turn for the worse since the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, while the laws passed by Ukrainian legislators in recent years greatly simplify the work of black market transplant specialists.
For example, Zakharova points out, the Law No. 5831 passed by the Ukrainian parliament on December 16, 2021, effectively waives the requirement for a written consent of a living donor or their relatives for organ donation.