At the beginning of August 2023, a story about the sale of Ukrainian military organs on the Darknet spread widely. We have checked whether this information has a factual basis.
The message that “the organs of dead Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers appeared in the assortment of one of the largest stores on the Darknet” was published on August 4 by the Telegram channel Mash (835,000 views at the time of writing this analysis). Among other things, the authors of Mash write that “those involved in the Kosovo Liberation Army, one of whose leaders is being tried for selling the organs of dead Serbian soldiers, can own or at least cooperate with the store.” Following Mash, similar messages were published, in particular, by the channels “Russia now" (300,000 views) and "Putin on Telegram"(171,000), and fasting official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova (358,000) shared TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov (207,000). Materials with links and/or quotes from Mash’s post were published by many Russian federal media (for example, “Moskovsky Komsomolets", "Arguments and facts" and TV channel "360"), and in "Rossiyskaya newspaper"and on website The Russian Foreign Ministry published an article entitled “The World Leader of Black Transplantology” authored by Zakharova, in which the speaker of the Russian diplomatic department directly quotes the Mash message.
There is indeed a marketplace on the Darknet called Anarchy 2029, which Mash writes about and which offers to buy “human organs from Ukraine” (Tor browser link). However, calling this trading platform one of the largest is groundless - at the time of writing, the store offers only about 20 products: pistols and ammunition for them, three types of fake passports, organs, as well as services for assistance in leaving Ukraine. For comparison, the range in ten The largest marketplaces have hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of offers. IN list major Darknet markets compiled by cybersecurity company Flashpoint, Anarchy 2029 is also not included. The site's forum is completely empty, and review There is only one item. There are currently no reviews of the site itself on specialized resources on the Darknet. Search engine data for the Darknet AHMIA and manual check of the site pages (at the addresses of WordPress file directories), allow us to assert that all of them were created in May-June 2023. There are no traces of the existence of Anarchy 2029 in the previous period either on the Darknet or on the open web.
Authors of the anonymous Telegram channel “Toad and Viper” assumedthat the site is not used for trading, but for phishing (theft of personal data), and several details indicate this. Firstly, the copyright in the footer of the page is illogical for an anonymous site selling weapons and fake passports - apparently, it ended up on Anarchy 2029 from a WordPress template on which the marketplace is built, and they simply forgot to remove it. Secondly, all photographs and descriptions of weapons are taken from open sources (for example, from “Wikipedia» for pistol TT), What uncharacteristic for sites on the Darknet, where full technical specifications are usually given, rather than advertising brochures. On the page about the sale of the fourth generation Glock 17, a photograph is not used at all of a firearm, but of a pneumatic copy (this is indicated by BB marking in the name of the file uploaded to the site). Thirdly, Anarchy 2029 does not describe the process of transferring an order, and in the form that opens when trying to pay for goods from the cart, you are asked to enter the real name, address and phone number of the buyer, which is nonsense for illegal trade on the Darknet, because its key advantage is anonymity. Unlike real sellers, scammers can request data.
Thus, it is impossible to even call the Anarchy 2029 site large, nor can it be said at all that any trading is carried out on this site. Mash's assessment of this store as "one of the largest" is not true.
As for the removal of donor organs from dead military personnel, it is prohibited in Ukraine by law. Despite this, the story about “black” transplantology, supposedly thriving in this country, spreads not the first month or even the first year. Materials on this topic regularly published in Russian pro-government media, but each time their authors did not provide any evidence confirming the authenticity of the messages. Various publications on this topic repeatedly debunked fact checkers, but we were unable to find any reports from international organizations about cases of trafficking in human organs during a full-scale war in Ukraine. And this is not surprising: as already wrote “Verified”, the transplantation process is very complex and involves the participation of dozens of people, so it is almost impossible to hide illegal donation, especially on any large scale. It is practically impossible in the field, since this requires not only highly qualified personnel, but also equipment that will allow the removal and preservation of organs, as well as transport that will deliver them to the recipient. In the conditions of closed airspace over Ukraine, this is practically unattainable: the maximum term organ storage between extraction and transplantation is four to six hours for the heart or lungs, 12–15 for the liver, and 36–48 for the kidneys.
Judging by the text on the Anarchy 2029 website, its creators ignore medical information, offering “any organ” for €5,000. If you look at other sites on the Darknet that offer similar “products,” you can find much more reliable options from a medical point of view. So, for example, one from marketplaces offers the selection of a donor in accordance with parameters (height, weight, blood type, etc.) and indicates that you will also need to select a place for the operation, and pay for the organ itself separately. It also shows prices for Southeast Asia: a heart costs $15,000, a lung and a kidney cost $5,000 each, two lungs and two kidneys cost $15,000 each, a liver fragment costs $5,000, and a whole liver costs $15,000.
Separately, it is worth noting Mash’s reference to the trade in the organs of Serbian prisoners of war by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which was quoted by Maria Zakharova. Indeed, such accusation to former President of Kosovo Hashim Thaci and a number of Kosovo military personnel were nominated twice, in 2003 and 2010 years, but at the moment it was filmed in lack of evidence, The Hague Tribunal is trying former commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army on others accusations. Parallel investigation by the EU special mission showedthat there was organ trafficking in Kosovo, but not by the military, and in 2013 five of those involved were convicted. The claim that one of the KLA leaders is being tried for trafficking in the organs of dead Serbian soldiers is false.
There is no reason to assert that Mash’s information about the sale of organs from Ukraine is in any way reliable. A site on the Darknet “selling the organs of the Ukrainian military” exists, but all evidence indicates that it was assembled on the knee specifically for the dissemination of a disinformation story no earlier than May 2023. The Mash publication also contains an unsubstantiated claim that members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were involved in the creation of the site and a false claim that one of the KLA members is being tried specifically for trafficking in the organs of Serbian soldiers.
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