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Police expose criminal network that trafficked orphans abroad, exploited draft exemptions

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by Kate Tsurkan
Police expose criminal network that trafficked orphans abroad, exploited draft exemptions
Police uncover perpetrators of a criminal network that sold Ukrainian orphans abroad and allowed draft-age men to escape the country. (National Police)

Ukrainian law enforcement uncovered a scheme in Odesa Oblast in which a criminal network trafficked orphans to foreigners and enabled draft-age men to pose as the children’s legal guardians to cross the border, the National Police reported on Dec. 9.

Intercountry adoption has been suspended under martial law, but investigators say the network circumvented those restrictions by forging paperwork that allowed draft-age men to present themselves as the children’s legal guardians.

Legal guardians of orphaned children are among the few categories of men exempt from military service during martial law and permitted to leave the country.

The group also pressured officials in child services and military enlistment offices, investigators said, relying on corruption and posing as well-placed figures from the President’s Office, adoption agencies and the legal community. One member, who lived abroad, operated under the cover of an international charitable foundation where he held a senior role.

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Thirteen children were illegally sent abroad and placed with foreign families for adoption, while law enforcement intercepted the transfer of another 12. The network received "significant sums of money" for each operation, according to law enforcement.

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Kate Tsurkan

Culture Reporter

Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who writes mostly about culture-related topics. Her newsletter Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan, which focuses specifically on Ukrainian culture, is published weekly by the Kyiv Independent and is partially supported by a generous grant from the Nadia Sophie Seiler Fund. Kate co-translated Oleh Sentsov’s “Diary of a Hunger Striker,” Myroslav Laiuk’s “Bakhmut,” Andriy Lyubka’s “War from the Rear,” and Khrystia Vengryniuk’s “Long Eyes,” among other books. Some of her previous writing and translations have appeared in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Apofenie Magazine and, in addition to Ukrainian and Russian, also knows French.

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