Russia invaded Ukraine. Then the sex traffickers moved in to exploit vulnerable women.

A Canadian woman recently came under investigation for attempting to coerce a group of Ukrainian women whom she had taken in as refugees to perform sex acts online.

Unfortunately, this story is not anomalous. Many Ukrainian women and girls are forced into similar or worse situations as they try to flee the war.

As the Russian invasion persists, this situation will as well. The United Nations Office on Drug and Crime predicts at least a 5% increase in Ukrainian human trafficking victims this year.

Far from the front lines, internet searches for sexual content featuring Ukrainian women have risen 600% since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. And, appallingly, “Ukraine refugee porn” became a trending search term.

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As a society, we need to ask ourselves why many people’s first instinct is to find pleasure in the sexual exploitation of another person – and take steps to change it. These searches are not harmless. Many of the videos feature exploited, desperate women who are often forced into sex work.

More than 8 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their country, causing an international refugee crisis. And over 5 million people are internally displaced. In times of war, people can be hard to track, and official statistics are often only approximate. But even by these metrics, at least 15 million individuals are in need of food, shelter and jobs.

Traffickers take advantage of refugees

Andrea Salvoni, the deputy coordinator for Combatting Trafficking in Human Beings with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), has seen firsthand how war pushes women into dire situations. When refugees can’t meet their basic needs, they are often defenseless against seemingly kind people who approach them to offer help. Often these people offer the things they know these women need most: hot food, a bed to sleep in and a stable income. 

In reality, they are preying on the women to force them into sex trafficking. Salvoni estimates that only 1 in 100 of the women who end up sex-trafficked are ever rescued.

Even before the Russian invasion, Ukraine was facing a human trafficking crisis. The U.S. Department of Justice published research 20 years ago about the epidemic of Ukrainian women being manipulated into human trafficking. 

Unfortunately, little has changed in the past two decades. An estimated 46,000 Ukrainians were trafficked between 2019 and 2021 – and that’s before the war began. Now, the Russian invasion has left millions of people, primarily women and children, vulnerable and without options. 

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Demand for commercial sex drives exploitation

While people like Salvoni and his colleagues are on the ground, there is plenty that we can do at home as well – starting with slowing demand. When traffickers know there is money to be made from these women, they seek them out for exploitation. But if men stopped buying sex, Salvoni says, “the market for sex trafficking would end.” 

OSCE has researched how to lower the world’s demand for commercial sex. For example, Norway, Sweden and other countries have made it illegal to pay for sex.

Of course, that in itself won’t stop the problem. According to Salvoni, however, “Making it criminal to use a trafficked person for sex sets an important norm. When there’s a law, it means society says the activity is wrong. Laws are a way of holding men accountable for the harm they cause when they’re buying sex.” 

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Not criminalizing this behavior condones the harm that these women suffer.  

Legal changes are insufficient, though, if there is not a cultural shift as well. People need to recognize how their actions affect the sex trafficking trade. There are steps that business and tech leaders can take to reinforce this – for instance, when individuals search for explicit material containing Ukrainian women and girls, websites could block the search or prompt a pop-up text box to say something like: “This behavior can harm the person you’re looking for.”

Everyday citizens can use these moments to think and be educated about the sex trafficking crisis and how their behavior may contribute to women’s exploitation.

It’s not enough to not be a part of the problem – we must be part of the solution. Individuals need to know about the reality of sex trafficking and the steps they can take in their own lives to stand against it.

By considering our actions on a global scale, we can ensure we are helping Ukrainian women find refuge from the war Russia has waged on their country – and protect vulnerable people everywhere.

Mitzi Perdue is a writer, speaker and author of  "Relentless," the biography of Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series. All royalties for Perdue's book will support humanitarian relief in Ukraine.