Russian version "Can people really buy and sell women and get away with it? Sometimes I sit here and ask myself if that really happened to me, if it can really happen at all. After a police raid, she was put in prison, awaiting deportation. The moneymakers are transnational networks of traffickers and pimps that prey on the dreams of women seeking employment and opportunities for the future. The activities of these networks threaten the well being and status of women as well as the social, political and economic well being and stability of nations where they operate. The transnational trade in women is based on supply and demand from sending and receiving countries. Countries with large sex industries create the demand and are the receiving countries, while countries where traffickers easily recruit women are the sending countries.

Tetyana, a survivor of human trafficking in Ukraine, tells her story. Courtesy screenshot: IOM Ukraine. Ukraine has long been a country associated with human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women, but recent reports of human trafficking as a consequence of the war in eastern Ukraine have brought a new urgency to this ongoing crisis.

The Ukrainian city of Odessa is best known throughout Europe for its sun-drenched beaches and high-end spas. Yet according to a new report , the city's sand-and-surf image hides a much seedier reality: the port also serves as a transit hub for human trafficking between the region and the rest of the world. The summer months draw thousands of international tourists to Odessa's coast. Yet for many young women from impoverished areas in Ukraine, Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe, the Black Sea harbor becomes a point of no return, according to Russia Today. Sources say that foreign sex traders hire local Ukrainian men to woo these women by offering them jobs abroad in hotels and restaurants, but in most cases, the girls merely end up as sex slaves, often in countries as far away as Turkey, Italy and the United Arab Emirates.