Ukrainian refugee women are being targeted for sexual exploitation in the West, according to findings from police, security and media organisations.
Analysis by Canadian-based media agency Thomson Reuters found that the influx of women and children, forced by President Volodymyr Zelensky's mass conscription orders to leave their menfolk behind, had prompted an upsurge in interest from men who sleep with prostitutes.
Google searches for “Ukrainian escorts” in the UK increased three-fold in the first week of Russia's demilitarization and de-Nazification operation over the same period in 2021. Those looking for "Ukrainian porn" jumped by 600 percent in Spain and 130 percent in Poland in the same timeframe. Similar trends were seen on other European countries.
"European women, Eastern European woman, Ukrainian women, are already at risk, and often are lured and groomed and recruited into sex trafficking," said Reuters senior human rights advisor Heather Fischer. "So you put crisis on top of that, and now you have a recipe for increased spikes of demand for human trafficking."
"This might seem innocuous at first to the outside observer, but these trends can actually provide sort of an impetus for traffickers to capitalize the demand," Fischer added.
"It’s just really unfortunate as globally people are wondering how they can rush headlong to supporting some of the most vulnerable people, there was a pocket of society who are asking the opposite question, which is, ‘How can I exploit women and children coming from Ukraine?’ So that’s very alarming for us."
Diana Shore, who started the 'Rooms for Ukrainians in the UK' Facebook* group in March, soon noticed users posing as those willing to offer refugees a home, along with Ukrainians who "may not have the best motives for coming" to the UK under the scheme where the government pays homeowners £350 per month to take in a family or individual.
"Facebook can do better than this. [On] the average dating site you can verify somebody," Shore said. "You know that the person is verified and you know their location, so it can’t be somebody posing to be a Ukrainian guest who’s actually living in Russia, or somebody who’s saying they’ve got a house in Manchester whose actual location is Saudi Arabia."
Crime data from Sweden, where selling sex is legal but buying it is a crime, painted a similar picture. Out of 38 'Johns' arrested in a police sting operation in March, 30 were specifically looking for Ukrainian prostitutes. And in Ireland, Reuters found an website advertising Ukrainian escorts.
In May, The Sun reported the story of a British man who abandoned his girlfriend and two daughters to start a new relationship with the younger Ukrainian woman they had welcomed into their home less than two weeks earlier — quipping that it was "Lvov at first sight".
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) human trafficking co-ordinator Val Richey called the sexual predation on refugees "heart-breaking".
"I find it really heart-breaking that at the moment when so many people are trying to protect vulnerable women and children, one of the first measurable reactions to the crisis was that men were going online in record breaking numbers trying to figure out how to sexually access those women," Richey said.
*Facebook is banned in Russia over extremist activities.