Prostitution in Ukraine

Prostitution in Ukraine is illegal but widespread and largely ignored by the government. In recent times, Ukraine has become a popular prostitution and sex trafficking destination. Ukraine is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked transnationally for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. Ukraine's dissolution from the Soviet Union, saw the nation attempt to transition from a planned economy to a market economy. The transition process inflicted economic hardship in the nation, with nearly 80% of the population forced into poverty in the decade that followed its independence. Unemployment in Ukraine was growing at an increasing rate, with female unemployment rising to 64% by 1997. The economic decline in Ukraine made the nation vulnerable and forced many to depend on prostitution and trafficking as a source of income. Sex tourism rose as the country attracted greater numbers of foreign tourists.

According to the director of the Ukrainian Institute of Social Studies in 2011, there were 50,000 women working as prostitutes with between one out of six and one out of seven prostitutes being a minor. A 2020-2021 demographic survey of thousands of Ukrainians in sex work, conducted in various parts of the country, found a much lower proportion of minors: 95.6% of those in sex work in Ukraine were over 19, and only between 0.5% and 1.5% were minors.

In regards to trafficking, Ukrainian citizens make up 80% of traffickers with 60% being women. Sexual trafficking victims tend to be women and girls between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six.

Ukraine is now known to have a greater number of trafficking victims than any other Eastern European nation after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 1998, the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior estimated that 400,000 Ukrainian women were trafficked during the previous decade; other sources, such as non-governmental organizations, state the number was even higher. According to the International Organization for Migration over 500,000 Ukrainian women have been exploited with trafficking to the West since its independence in 1991 up to 1998.

Ukrainian women have been exported to countries across the world, such as Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, Hungary, United Arab Emirates, Syria etc. According to multiple reports the Ukrainian sex-workers are the largest group of foreign women in Turkey involved into prostitution and the second largest group of foreign women involved into prostitution outside the US military bases in Republic of Korea.

Of trafficking victims, 80% were unemployed prior to leaving Ukraine. Traffickers use this economic vulnerability to recruit women into prostitution. Many victims were convinced to leave Ukraine with the promise of profit by traffickers. The traffickers say they will work as dancers or in-store clerks. Victims are usually exported with legal documents such as travel visas. Ukrainian police say 70% of trafficked women travel with genuine documents obtained from corrupt officials. The majority of women cross the border with these genuine documents as opposed to being smuggled. Once they arrive in their destination country, they are frequently trapped by pimps taking away their visas, or by owing the pimps money to be paid off with prostitution. If they succeed in paying off their debt, some become recruiters, going back to Ukraine and telling friends and family they made a significant amount of money by going abroad. Approximately 60% of traffickers are Ukrainian women. While an IOM survey in 2011 says that 92% of Ukrainians were aware of sexual trafficking, trafficking continued to increase since then. Ukrainians working irregularly abroad increased from 28% to 41% from 2011 to 2015.

In Ukraine, children are often the victims of forced labor and other kind of sexual exploitations. The group most prone to prostitution are ones belonging to poor families, homeless children and orphans; the exposure of living on the streets without protection makes them the most vulnerable.

Ukraine experiences between 7000 and 8000 cases of sexual children exploitation per year. According to the IOM data, 10% of the 1355 Ukrainian victims of trafficking, were adolescents. Although child prostitution in Ukraine is illegal, a retrospective inquiry of adults shows that 20% of women and a 10% of men have experienced a sexual abuse by the age of 18.