Ukraine is willing to trade its people’s organs for Western military help, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Thursday on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Zakharova’s Allegations
According to Zakharova, the Kyiv government is rapidly transforming Ukraine into a global hub of human organ trafficking.
“The Kyiv regime is ready to pay anything for military assistance...It’s now come to the human organs of its citizens,” she said, adding, “a time will probably come when Ukraine will understand the true reason why its US and European friends cared about it.”
Russian news agency TASS further quoted the Russian diplomat as saying, “They literally took a knife to the country, but it will be too late to complain. The patient has already signed consent for surgery. The relevant international organisations, with art worthy of a better cause, are ignoring these obvious and criminal phenomena.”
Zakharova asserted that Western nations benefit from alleged illegal human organ trafficking in Ukraine, claiming that it happened in Yugoslavia as well when “all organs that were removed from the people, who were killed then, went to cater to the needs of Westerners.”
Ukraine is ready to trade the organs of its people for Western military assistance, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum:https://t.co/6CdPNcdFuQ pic.twitter.com/QFpLfC8g8S
— TASS (@tassagency_en) June 15, 2023
According to a Russian foreign ministry official, human transplantation procedures are prospering due to Ukrainian military deaths, saying that the corpses of Ukrainian troops “are burned, and the relatives are told” the serviceman is just missing.
Zakharova stated that Ukraine’s parliament enacted Law 5831, which governs the transplantation of human anatomical elements. “A transplant now does not require a notarized consent from the living donor or his relatives,” she asserted, adding that proactively taking organs from deceased persons “has also been significantly simplified.”
The Russian official went on to allege that private facilities in Ukraine were granted permission to conduct transplants, and that the procedures were exempt from value-added tax (VAT).
False Information on Human Harvesting in Ukraine
Earlier this year, the EU’s anti-disinformation initiative, EUvsDisinfo, raised concerns about allegations of illegal human harvesting in Ukraine. EUvsDisinfo described it as a “sensational pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative” because there was no evidence to support the allegation.
EUvsDisinfo has previously discredited similar false data, such as a human organ trafficking ring uncovered in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, and the Ukrainian Health Ministry allowing deceased Ukrainians to be traded for organs.
According to the EU fact-checker, human organ trafficking allegations have circulated since 2014, during Russia’s first military campaign against Ukraine.
Similarly, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada’s foreign signals intelligence agency, identified false reports of human organ harvesting activities from Russia in April 2022. According to CSE, Russia embarked on a coordinated effort to broadcast disinformation against Ukraine.