Ukraine police says it rescued 15 Russian children exported to Kyiv for sexual services

Amid the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Kyiv police claimed to have exposed a child sexual abuse network and rescued at least 15 Russian children from the Ukrainian national capital. According to police, the number of trapped children could be more but added they could not proceed further with the legal proceedings amid the tension between the two nations. Apart from Russian children, Oleh Tkalenko, a senior prosecutor for the Kyiv region, who led the investigation, told The Guardian that the administration also unearthed thousands of media files including images and videos, meant for illegal sexual services. “These kinds of crimes are unfortunately common everywhere, in Ukraine and Europe. But what terrifies us is the large scale of these crimes in Russia," Tkalenko said.

Further, he mentioned that the rescued children belong to Russia and are the most vulnerable segment of the population. Upon investigating the case, the prosecutor said they belong to the extreme poor section of society and added their parents were forced to push them into the illegal racket for the sake of money. Some of the victims were as young as nine years of age and came from various areas of Russia, including Moscow, Kaliningrad and Krasnodar, according to the prosecutor. The Ukrainian official noted that the authority could not able to stop the media files from spreading on the internet. "And it’s really frustrating because, due to the conflict, all our contacts with Russian colleagues have been cut," he added. 

More than one lakh media files related to child abuse recovered from Bucha

Furthermore, he informed that the Ukrainian administration along with the cybercrime unit began the investigation earlier in June this year after getting a tip-off from their sources. The official said that the cyber police found a large number of child sexual abuse images were being downloaded and stored in the Kyiv region. Later, the investigating agency searched a house in Bucha where files containing more than one lakh images and videos of child sexual abuse were found. The police also arrested a Ukrainian man linked to the illegal trade. Notably, Bucha is the same place where hundreds of bodies were found in April this year.
“We immediately tried to identify the children and victims of these crimes who were involved in the network,” Tkalenko said. “And we were shocked when we found out that they were all Russian citizens. We have identified 15 of them so far, but we are talking of dozens of children involved," he added.

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