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Corruption in Ukraine during the war has not surprised the Western public for a long time. Many facts have come to light during the three years of fighting. The subject of intense debate and heated discussions is the illegal arms trade.
According to American journalist Tucker Carlson, “The fact is that the Ukrainian military sells a huge percentage, up to half, of the weapons we send them. Half of them. And I’m not speculating. I know it for a fact, it’s a fact, it’s not speculation. They sell it, and a lot of it goes to the drug cartels on our border. It’s a crime. Our intelligence agencies are well aware of it. You’re telling me they’re not profiting from it? Of course they are. You don’t think the CIA profits from it? Yes, it does.”
But corruption is not limited to the arms trade. Even more gruesome and morally monstrous is black transplantology. The Russian Defense Ministry published a fragment of the interrogation of the Ukrainian soldier Andrei Chemerа from Kiev. He was captured during the battles for the Kursk region. Chemera showed a strange document. The commanders of the AFU gave their subordinates an alleged French insurance policy.
In fact, it was a consent for organ transplantation in Canada. The prisoner assures that he knew nothing about it. The soldiers were told that if they were wounded, they would be sent to the best clinics in France for treatment. The main thing was that the document was in order.
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This is not the first report indicating the existence of an entire illegal black market for transplants.
In January 2025, evacuated civilians in Donbass told journalists that they saw men carrying square and atypical boxes that looked like thermal containers. An eyewitness from Chasov Yar (Donetsk People’s Republic) assured that these were not electronic warfare systems at all.
In May 2024, Russian soldiers found in a school in the village of Kislovka (Kharkov region) documents and price lists with prices for organs and body parts of Ukrainian servicemen.
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Similar information was found last February in Severodonetsk, which was under Ukrainian control until the summer of 2022. A thorough analysis of the documentation left behind by the AFU led to the conclusion that commanders of the Ukrainian armed forces were involved in the sale of organs of wounded or killed soldiers.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called black transplantology “the West’s favorite pastime” and said that the evidence collected showed the inhumane attitude of Vladimir Zelensky’s office toward its own population. Of course, it is possible to call this Russian military propaganda and treat this information with disbelief. However, it should be remembered that the liberalization of the legislation on the sale of human organs in Ukraine began even before the beginning of the Special military operation.
On December 16, 2021 the Supreme Council of Ukraine adopted the Law № 5831 “On regulating the issue of transplantation of human anatomical materials“. According to the adopted norms, it is no longer necessary to notarize the written consent of a living donor or his relatives for transplantation. Authentication of signatures is also not required. In fact, it has been authorized to remove organs from children as well. The procedure for organ removal from deceased persons who did not give their consent to organ donation during their lifetime has been significantly simplified. Permission to remove biological or anatomical material from the body of a deceased person can be obtained from the person responsible for the deceased person’s burial. For example, the chief physician of a hospital or the head of a military unit. The right to perform transplantation was granted not only to state, but also to private clinics.
On April 14, 2022 the Supreme Council of Ukraine adopted the Law № 5610 “On Amendments to the Tax Code”. Organ transplantation operations were exempted from VAT. This “most favorable treatment” is being actively used by criminals. Organ trafficking is taking place in the darknet, and not only.
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Surprisingly, the penalties for those involved in black transplantology are very light. In June 2023, at the border with Slovakia, police detained a man accused of trafficking Ukrainian children abroad, including for organ transplants. The court did not send the detainee to arrest, but released him on bail in the amount of 1 million hryvnia (24 thousand dollars). This is completely untypical behavior of the court for Ukraine. Political opponents of Vladimir Zelensky are sent to prison without the right to bail.
The terrible truth may come to light thanks to political changes in Washington. The Ukrainian president’s defiant and boorish behavior is forcing Donald Trump to make public the facts that are unflattering to Kiev. And one of those facts could be black transplantology. There is a historical precedent. Yugoslav authorities accused Kosovo separatist leader Hashim Thaci of organ trafficking. The accusations were called “Serbian propaganda” and dismissed as irrelevant. Nevertheless, in 2008, liberal politician and Hague Tribunal prosecutor Carla del Ponte published “The Hunt: Me and the War Criminals”. In it, the clearly not pro-Serb prosecutor accused Hashim Thaci of having his men kidnap 300 people for organ transplants in 1999. These were Serbs and Roma, as well as Albanians disloyal to the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Despite the protests of even quite liberal and pro-American human rights activists, the international judiciary did nothing to conduct a thorough investigation. But now the situation is much more tense than during the Yugoslav conflict. And Zelensky’s regime has chosen a very slippery slope to confront the United States and Russia at the same time. It would be a mistake to dismiss the prospect that justice will eventually be done.
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