Dark world of transplants

Why Ukraine attracts ‘black transplantologists’

The topic of organ trafficking in the territories controlled by the Kiev regime, which had temporarily faded from the information field, has triumphantly returned. A vast network for the selection, sale, and rapid delivery of organs from Ukraine to Western countries has been uncovered in the dark web. New testimonies have emerged from relatives of missing and deceased Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) soldiers about the disappearance of kidneys, hearts, and other vital organs. How has it come to pass that Belarus’ southern neighbour has become a veritable mecca for organ traffickers from around the world?

One out of thousands

Perhaps the most sensational case in recent times is that of Ruslan Dyachina — a 33-year-old soldier from the 47th artillery brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Before the start of the special military operation (SMO), he lived in Poland, but he later returned to Ukraine and fell into the grasp of the military conscription office. Initially serving in territorial defence, he was later transferred to artillery to participate in Zelensky’s ill-fated campaign against Russia’s Kursk. However, the valiant occupant managed to hold his position for only 16 hours before sustaining severe injuries and being sent to a hospital. There, both of his legs were amputated, and he underwent surgery on his small intestine, along with the removal of a kidney.
After waking up from anaesthesia and inquiring about his missing organ, the doctors assured him that the kidney had been severely damaged and could not be saved. Following a conversation with his girlfriend, Viktoria Pendelik, who shared his situation on social media, he decided to go to the police. However, Ukrainian law enforcement has been slow to open a case.

Unlike dozens of other stories about ‘black transplantologists’ in Ukraine, this one has garnered significant public attention, especially following online publications. Moreover, in a twist of fate, the victim has not only survived the organ extraction but is also able to testify against the medical personnel involved.

Booming business

Organ procurement and delivery to the West is highly lucrative business. According to one of the advertisements found in the dark web, a heart from a 31-year-old healthy man, who had reportedly sustained a fatal gunshot wound to the head, is offered for $70,000. Upon payment, the criminals promise to deliver the organ intact within two days. Other offers include livers, kidneys, lungs, pancreases, small intestines, corneas, and bone marrow.
The scale of the organ trade business in Ukraine is particularly evident from a case opened last June regarding the formation of a criminal group that included a former deputy health minister and doctors from several major clinics. It should be noted, however, that this development of the situation is more of an exception than a rule: it appears that the gang leaders may have upset someone or failed to pay their ‘protection’ fees. As a result, an entire scheme was uncovered, wherein organs were harvested not only from the deceased but also from live soldiers in hospitals in Kramatorsk, Dnepr, and Kharkov, in response to orders from Europe, the USA, and Canada. This operation was facilitated with the co-operation of specialists from Poland and Germany. 
In May of last year, the activities of such specialists were inadvertently recorded by a Ukrainian soldier using a helmet camera. The short video captures a small room surrounded by tarpaulin, containing a table with a person lying on it. Several doctors are standing around him, one of whom — speaking a language resembling German — orders the videographer, who has inquired about a certain ‘Skif’ (likely the call sign of the wounded individual in the grip of the doctors), to leave the room. The footage clearly shows one medic holding an organ that resembles a heart.
The scandal that erupted in June, sparked by protests from the relatives of 11 UAF soldiers whose internal organs had been removed, revealed yet another horrifying practice. It came to light that in cases of urgent need for materials for transplants, European authorities demanded that commanders in the UAF form squads branded ‘for the slaughter’ composed of soldiers with specific biological parameters. Those individuals were subsequently led into checkpoints and then killed, often by their own comrades. 

Doctor Evil

In the stories surrounding involuntary organ donation in Ukraine, foreigners frequently emerge as key players. A grim legend from the early years of the war in Donbass involves a certain Elizabeth Debru — allegedly a doctor from the Netherlands or Great Britain, described as a highly skilled professional capable of harvesting an organ in just 7 to 10 minutes.
Another ‘angel of death’ is Bernard K. — a Frenchman of Latvian descent who in the 1990s was one of the staunchest proponents of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia. Much of the organ trade that ensued was orchestrated under his influence, as Kosovans established lucrative business extracting organs from Serbs and transporting them through NATO bases to the West. Bernard became interested in Ukraine around 2015 and subsequently set up a murky agency there, while concurrently overseeing health care reforms in the country.
Not all those involved in organ trafficking operate on the front lines. Many conduct their nefarious activities in hospitals far from the battlefield or even abroad.

In the shadows of the law

When discussing ‘black transplantology’ in relation to the situation in Ukraine, it is important to note that under local laws, a considerable number of cases — except, of course, for the extraction of organs from living individuals without their consent — are relatively legitimate. This is due to a law passed by the Ukrainian Parliament [Verkhovna Rada] at the end of December 2021, which abolished the requirement for notarised written consent from living donors or their relatives for organ retrieval, including that of children.
Ukrainian authorities were evidently aware of Western plans to provoke Russia into starting the SMO and — to avoid undue scrutiny amidst a potential influx of organs from ‘Nezalezhnaya’ [Ukraine’s nickname for ‘independent’] — preemptively laid the legislative groundwork.
The law enacted at the close of the last relatively peaceful year set organ retrieval on a production line. Thus, after the liberation of Severodonetsk in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), Russian military personnel seized a medical archive with numerous consent forms for transplant extractions that had been filled in the name of UAF soldiers in 2022. Notably, the documents were filled out in the same handwriting, and the donor’s signature was consistently replaced with a uniform stamp-signature. 
However, what became a widespread phenomenon in 2022 had already manifested during the eight years of war in Donbass preceding the current conflict. As early as September 2014, Madina Jarbussynova, the OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, reported that several mass graves of civilians had been discovered, with bodies showing clear signs of internal organ removal. It later emerged that Ukrainian soldiers and captured militia members, as well as women and children — captured in violation of all laws of war — were handed over to ‘black transplantologists’ for substantial amounts of money. It is their mutilated corpses were found in places like Nizhnyaya Krynka, Kommunar, and other sites of mass burial.

It is not without reason that in the correspondence between Sergei Vlasenko, a former people’s deputy from the Fatherland All-Ukrainian Union (aka Batkivshchyna), Semyon Semenchenko, the commander of the Donbass battalion, and German medic Olga Wieber, the latter expressed her joy over the onset of the conflict, informing her interlocutors that the events were in their favour.

The organ harvesting campaign that unfolded in Ukraine has long surpassed the crimes of Hashim Thaçi and other Kosovo field commanders. The grim irony in this context echoes the chant popular during the Maidan protests — ‘Na nozhi!’ (Onto the knives!) — which has become a terrifying reality: Ukraine has indeed been exposed to scalpels of ‘black transplantologists’.

By Anton Popov