Clayton Morris is a former Fox News journalist. Together with his wife, Natali Morris, he has the Redacted YouTube channel, which spreads openly pro-Russian narratives.
In one of their latest videos, the authors of the channel discussed the topic of child trafficking in Ukraine. Here are some quotes:
“Women in Ukraine are kept in bomb shelters by companies that earn billions of dollars from the baby farming industry. A Swiss surrogacy company called Biotech.com explains in one of its promotional videos that desperate Ukrainian women can come to a bomb shelter and turn their wombs into baby-making machines. The business is booming, and the amount of money this business brings in is expected to double next year.”
“Ukraine controls at least a quarter of the world surrogacy market. Despite the fact that less than 1% of the world’s population lives in the country.”
“Even before the war, the UN and other human rights organizations sounded the alarm about child trafficking and organ harvesting in Ukraine after NATO launched a proxy war against the people of Donbas in 2014 (we call it genocide). The world knew what was happening. Ukrainian orphanages are a breeding ground for child trafficking. A three-year investigation into Ukrainian orphanages (Huffington Post) found that children are at risk of being sold for sex work and selling their organs. The report says that approximately 82,000 children lived in institutions, some Ukrainian activists put the number closer to 200,000 children.
“The Government of Ukraine has not reported any investigations or prosecutions of public officials for alleged involvement in crimes related to human trafficking. We probably pay some of these people pensions and salaries. The US State Department report says that the Ukrainian government will not even prosecute its own government officials who participated in child trafficking.”
“Last year, when the Russian authorities seized the Mariupol hospital, they discovered Red Cross files there, which listed children’s organs. Hundreds of medical files contain information about children’s health, healthy organs without signs of any disease, and files also contain data about who the child’s parents are. This is a great and very profitable business.”
Clayton Morris also traditionally mentions biological laboratories in Ukraine.
The latest “information” by The Ukrainians Review was repeatedly denied. Let’s analyze other theses.
“Ukraine controls a quarter of the world surrogacy market”
It is worth noting that Ukrainian legislation allows surrogate motherhood. And Ukraine really occupies a quarter of the commercial surrogacy market.
Every year, more than 2,000 children are born through surrogate motherhood in Ukraine, most of them from foreign couples. There are about 50 reproductive clinics in the country.
The authors of Redacted present it as something illegal. However, why was Ukraine a popular choice for foreigners for surrogacy?
“I would single out the following root causes:
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Loyal legislation, more precisely the lack of proper legislative regulation and control by the state, as well as a simple procedure and a minimal package of documents – encourages foreigners to conduct the procedure in our country.
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Only medical evidence and a standard package of documents are required from the future parents themselves: an application, copies of passports, and marriage certificates.
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A clear commercial basis for carrying out the process of surrogacy Future parents enter into a contract with the surrogate mother and the clinic where the fertilization procedure will take place. Therefore, there are no special requirements for a contract with a surrogate mother, so all necessary medical and economic aspects can be described in detail.
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In Ukraine, when a child is born to a surrogate mother, the parents do not need to go through the adoption procedure or other legal procedures. According to the law, if all the necessary contracts are in place with the clinic and the surrogate mother, it is enough to register the birth of the child. From birth, the surrogate mother does not have any parental rights over the child.
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Currently, a large number of clinics have been established that can provide surrogacy services. Parents have a lot to choose from. And not only in the capital but also in various cities. It is worth noting that the quality of medical services in this area in Ukraine is at a fairly good level. At the same time, each clinic has a sufficiently large database of potential surrogate mothers.
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And the most attractive reason for foreigners is the affordable cost of the service. While the usual price of such a service is several times higher in Europe than in Ukraine”, – explains Miroslava Soroka, lawyer, member of the Human Rights Protection Committee of UNBA.
“Surrogate mothers are kept in bomb shelters”
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, the civilians of Ukraine found themselves in a critical situation: constant rocket attacks, and the advance of Russian troops into peaceful cities that were only yesterday. People’s lives and health were under threat. Accordingly, doctors and patients were in bomb shelters.
As of February 27, 2022, the third day of Russian aggression, six children were born in Ukraine’s bomb shelters.
“Ukrainian surrogate mothers are kept in bomb shelters only by regular shelling from the aggressor country of the Russian Federation. The element of illegal detention of pregnant women in bomb shelters is completely absent: going down to the shelter is an elementary desire to save a life for yourself and the future baby, for whom his parents are waiting. Therefore, the arrangement of bomb shelters is a forced measure of the military situation in which Ukraine is currently”, – Anastasia Tikhonova, independent medical consultant.
Serhiy Odarenko, the editor of the fact-checking project “Behind the news”, analyzes this thesis:
“This is a classic manipulation of enemy propaganda. The YouTube channel “Redacted” was chosen to promote this narrative not by chance. This channel has been used by the Russians for almost half a year to wage an information war against Ukraine.
The Counter-Disinformation Center of the NSDC of Ukraine calls Morris’s information about “surrogate mothers in Ukraine who are kept in bomb shelters and forced to turn their wombs into a baby-making machine” a fake.
The manipulation of Russian propaganda was created on the basis of news that came out in early August 2023, when law enforcement officers reported that in Ukraine, they had uncovered a large-scale scheme of trafficking babies abroad under the guise of surrogate motherhood.
Also, the manipulation of surrogate mothers is based on the video of the company BioTexCom. The clinic calls itself the largest in Ukraine that provides surrogacy services.
Indeed, at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, in March 2022, company representatives reported that those participating in the surrogacy program were forced to hide in bomb shelters due to constant Russian shelling.
“Evacuation.City” journalists, translating The New York Times article “Parents Relying on Ukraine Surrogates Desperately Seek Their Newborns”, cite a quote from BioTexCom legal consultant Denys Herman at the time: “It is better for babies to stay in clinics for a while than to hastily move somewhere under fire “.
“Trafficking of children in orphanages”
It is the Russian media that spreads the information that Ukraine is “the leader among post-Soviet countries in human trafficking.”
In the 2022 annual Trafficking in Persons Report, the US ranked 188 countries and assigned each to one of four ranking levels based on the country’s efforts to combat the problem. The first level is countries that do not cause concern (EU countries, USA, Great Britain, Australia, Georgia, South Korea, and others). Ukraine was assigned to the second level. This means that the country’s government does not fully meet the standards for eliminating forms of human trafficking, but is making significant efforts. However, the report does not refer to large-scale human trafficking in Ukraine, as reported by Russian media and Clayton Morris. In addition, he emphasizes that this problem has existed since 2014, but in the report for 2015, Ukraine was also at the second level of the rating.
Therefore, we can conclude that human trafficking in Ukraine is a real problem, but not such a large-scale phenomenon as they try to show it.
But in 2022, Russia was assigned to the third level of the rating, that is, it is there
the degree of non-compliance with the minimum standards of the TVPA and the presence of complicity of officials or public servants in serious forms human trafficking
Regarding the sale of organs, this is also the narrative of the Russian media since 2014.
Analysts at Myth Detector have dissected this fake and explain that organ transplantation is a complex and time-limited medical procedure that cannot be performed in the field:
“In the case of brain death, the brain tissue is dead and dysfunctional; however, with the use of special mechanical and artificial tools, heartbeat, and breath, thus the life of organs can be sustained. Such support is only possible under hospital conditions, under intensive supervision, and not at the scene of military actions”.
Mykhailo Kharin, a lawyer, told about the purpose of spreading such narratives:
“In this context, if Russian media and pro-Russian Western media have been spreading information about the “huge black business of human and organ trafficking” since 2014, there are several possible motives and influences that can be considered:
Destabilization and discredit: This information campaign may be aimed at discrediting and destabilizing the situation in countries that have conflict relations with Russia. The spread of this type of misinformation may indicate a negative attitude towards these countries and an attempt to show them in a bad light.
Sowing panic and uncertainty: Dissemination of information about organized human and organ trafficking can cause panic among the public. This can lead to insecurity in society and undermine trust in the authorities, undermining stability.
Psychological impact on society: By creating threat and danger, this information campaign can try to create a sense of insecurity and fear in society, which can then be used to strengthen control over it.
Distraction: Dissemination of such information can divert attention from the real problems and challenges facing Russia, thereby reducing criticism and pressure on the domestic political regime.
An attempt to influence the international image: The dissemination of information about “huge black business” may be aimed at diverting the attention of the international community from the problems in Russia and from its war in Ukraine.
Such disinformation campaigns can pose complex challenges for governments, the media and the public as they need to analyse, verify and uncover the truth in circumstances where information is being manipulated.”
“Ukraine does not prosecute those involved in human trafficking”
On July 30, 2023, the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Kateryna Pavlichenko, noted that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine creates the most favorable conditions for aggravating the problem of human trafficking and exploitation.
“Since the beginning of the year, the police have sent criminal proceedings to the court against three organized groups of human traffickers. 84 facts of human trafficking were documented in 6 months. 36 traffickers were given the status of suspects,”— states the National Police.
That is, the National Police of Ukraine works and detains criminal groups involved in human trafficking.
“The Red Cross collected children’s medical cards with the designation of healthy organs”
The International Committee of the Red Cross denied this fake: the organization does not collect medical records of children and is not involved in organ trafficking:
“The video, which was filmed in our Mariupol office and is now circulating in some media, is full of false statements and baseless assumptions about the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)… The video also claims that the ICRC has a stack of medical records of children. But The ICRC does not collect any such documents. The video also implies that the ICRC is involved in organ trafficking. This is another categorically false accusation.”
The information was also denied by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.
It is worth noting that information about the state of health, the state of health of individual organs and information about parents in medical documents is a standard practice: in Ukraine, outpatient preventive examination of children, even healthy ones, is conducted. Protocols for ambulatory supervision, examinations, and documentation are regulated by regulatory documents that are consistent with international standards. So, for example, the Clinical protocol of medical care for a healthy child under the age of 3, approved by the order of the Ministry of Health No. 149 of March 20, 2008, is coordinated with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Strategy “Health and Development of Children and Adolescents “. It indicates the need for examination and assessment of the child’s condition by organs and systems.
Clayton and Natali Morris continue to play along with Russian propaganda and spread false information to their audience of millions.
Anya Ostymchuk
