In Ukraine, Russia is accused of a whole series of war crimes. Telegram chats are now supposed to prove that Russians themselves do not shy away from kidnapping children.
Ukraine's human rights commissioner has accused Russians of kidnapping Ukrainian children and selling them for sexual abuse. There are corresponding messages in online networks, explained Dmytro Lubinets. They revealed "that Russians are kidnapping Ukrainian children and making sex videos with them". For example, 250,000 rubles (more than 3,200 euros) were offered for a boy "who is about to start school".
The human rights commissioner of the Ukrainian parliament posted a chat on Telegram between two users who he said were exchanging views on the sale of a boy for child pornography. "He was brought from Ukraine, from a children's home, he has no relatives," wrote one of the users, offering sex videos. "We bring in little ones for this type of work. He's not the first we've brought in," the user reportedly added.
War and human trafficking go hand in hand. After the Ukraine crisis of 2014 and 2015, the proportion of Ukrainian victims in the global total rose to almost 5 percent for a short time, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Now the risk for people from Ukraine has risen to this level again because of the war.
Russia has been accused of numerous war crimes since the attack on Ukraine began. International investigators have been following such tips for months. So far, nearly 65,000 incidents of war crimes have been reported, EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders reported at a justice ministers' meeting in Stockholm. He called this the "highest number of war crimes ever documented". They are based, among other things, on mobile phone recordings that are leaked to the investigators.
