In 2009, efforts to crack down on human trafficking in Russia focused not only on the men, women, and children who were illegally shipped out of Russia to undergo forced labor and sexual exploitation in other countries, but also those who were illegally brought into Russia from abroad. The Government of the Russian Federation has made significant progress in this area since 1999, but a report commissioned by the United States Department of State in 2010 concluded that much more needed to be done before Russia could be taken off its Tier 3 watchlist.
Russia ratified the 2000 UN TIP Protocol in May 2004. United Nations Treaty Collection website, Chapter XVIII Penal Matters section, Section 12a, retrieved August 19, 2024
The U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 3" in 2017. The country was still at Tier 3 in 2023, US Government website, Trafficking in Persons Report 2023 with the U.S. report noting that it was one of eleven countries which were seen as having a documented government policy or pattern of human trafficking.
In 2023, the Organised Crime Index noted that children in the occupied areas of Ukraine were at risk of human trafficking. Organised Crime Index website, Russia retrieved August 19, 2024
Human trafficking In 2009, the International Labour Organization reported that forced labor is the most predominant form of trafficking in Russia. Men, women and children from Russia and from other countries—such as Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Moldova—are subjected to conditions of debt bondage and forced labor, including in the construction industry, in textile shops, and in the agricultural and fishing sectors. An estimated 20,000 men and women from North Korea are annually brought in to Russia, and subjected to conditions of forced labor in Russia. Women and children from Nigeria, Central Asia, Ukraine, China, Moldova and AfricaIn Moscow, arrested three Chinese prostitutes. TIME (January 14, 2009).Prostitutes from China to Moscow was caught on the verses! TIME (08.04.2011). are subjected to forced prostitution and forced begging in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Men from Western Europe and the United States travel to Western Russia, specifically St. Petersburg, for the purpose of child sex tourism. The number of child trafficking victims in these cities is decreasing; experts credit this to aggressive police investigations and Russian cooperation with foreign law enforcement.
The North Korean regime provides contract labor for logging camps operated by North Korean companies in the Russian Far East. There are allegations that this labor is exploitative, specifically that the North Korean government and North Korean companies keep up to 85 percent of the wages paid to the workers and that workers' movement is controlled. Although there have been instances in which government officials were investigated, prosecuted, and convicted for trafficking in recent years, allegations of widespread complicity persist.
Prosecution
Legislation Article 127 of the Russian Criminal Code prohibits both trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Other criminal statutes are also used to prosecute and convict traffickers. Article 127 prescribes punishments of up to five years' imprisonment for trafficking crimes; aggravating circumstances may extend penalties up to 15 years' imprisonment. Article 152 states that all purchasing or selling of a minor is punishable by up to 5 years in prison. More commonly, people guilty of human trafficking are charged under Article 240 and 241, which involve affiliation with prostitution and brothels, as these crimes are easier to prove in court.
In July 2006, the Russian government passed asset forfeiture legislation that permits prosecutors to forfeit the assets of convicted persons, including traffickers. Some law enforcement officials were provided with anti-trafficking training; however, this training was sporadic and limited to a small number of police officers, investigators, and prosecutors.
In 2009, police conducted 102 trafficking investigations under Article 127, and prosecuted 99 individuals, 76 of whom were convicted and prescribed sentences ranging from six months' to 13 years' imprisonment.
In 2013, Russia's Foreign Ministry for Human Rights Konstantin Dolgov said about the authors of the US Department of State's Trafficking in Persons Report, it is an "unacceptable ideological approach that divides nations into rating groups depending on the US State Department's political sympathies or antipathies." This was in response to Russia being demoted to the Tier 3 status. Russia has since withdrawn giving federal statistics involving human trafficking to the US State Department, however various NGO's and other organizations are still cooperating with foreign agencies.
In 2013, 28 people were convicted under Article 127.1, where 23 given sentences ranging from between 2 and 11 years' imprisonment.
Allegations of complicity Corruption has been identified as both an "underlying root cause and a facilitating tool" for human trafficking, ensuring that it "remains a low-risk, high profit crime". Corruption can take many forms, including forging documents, and falsifying travel visa's and documents, as well as protection money to the officials to ensure a lack of investigation.
The Government of the Russian Federation has demonstrated minimal progress in combating government complicity in human trafficking. In February 2010, several media sources reported on one allegation that a high-level official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs was involved in a forced labor trafficking ring spanning from 2006 through 2008. In that case, members of the elite riot police allegedly kidnapped dozens of migrant workers and forced them to work on police construction projects and also the personal homes of high-level police officials. In January 2010, a senior district police commissioner in Astrakhan was convicted and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment for taking passports and travel documents from migrants and forcing them to work as agricultural laborers.
During the reporting period in 2009, the Moscow district military court prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced one senior military officer to 10 years' imprisonment for organizing an international sex trafficking syndicate which was allegedly responsible for trafficking 130 women and girls between 1999 and 2007; the government did not report whether two additional high-level government officials investigated by authorities in this case in 2008 were prosecuted or convicted during the reporting period.
The government reported no progress on two additional investigations reported in the 2009 TIP Report—one investigation involved a low-level police officer arrested for trafficking women to the U.A.E. and the second investigation involved two low-level police officers arrested for trafficking women within Russia for forced prostitution; these investigations were still on-going at the end of the reporting period. There was no updated information on whether the three officials that were arrested for trafficking-related complicity in 2007—as reported in the 2008 and 2009 TIP Reports—were prosecuted, convicted, or punished during the reporting period. There was no updated information on whether the five military officials investigated in 2007 for the labor exploitation of military conscripts under their command were prosecuted, convicted, or punished for their actions during the reporting period.
Lack of investigation Many officials share a lack of initiative with respect to instigating an investigation. There are many reasons for this. One is the centralized, hierarchical policing system. Investigation and prosecution are divided into 2 groups. These groups answer to the MVD. For fear of reprimand, lower ranking officials are less inclined to initiate investigations. Investigations into human trafficking are only conducted with consent from higher-ranking officials. Furthermore, investigations are extended as there is no cross-agency to encourage cooperation with prosecution and investigation.
This systemic reluctance is clearly exemplified by the notorious Golyanovo slaves case. In this instance, local police officers were found to be complicit in the forced labor and abuse of grocery store workers, frequently returning escaped victims to their captors. Consequently, local law enforcement had a vested interest in avoiding an investigation into their own corruption. At the same time, higher-ranking MVD officials reportedly stalled the investigation and covered up the crimes to prevent tarnishing the ministry's public reputation. The case highlights how police complicity and the institutional desire to protect the department's image severely hinder the prosecution of human trafficking networks in Russia.
Criminal syndicates It can be hard to combat organized criminal groups involved in trafficking, since the groups are generally small; no group seized in Russia in connection with human trafficking has had more than twenty members. A typical group has only ten members, not counting co-conspirators based in other countries. Very big Russian criminal syndicates like Solntsevskaya Bratva don't involve themselves in human trafficking as dealers, but as buyers of victims, to put to work in their casinos, restaurants and brothels.Aleksanr Kolesnichenko, Kira Vasilyeva, Mafia is immortal, Noviye Izvestiya, 14.03.2007 It is unknown exactly how many mafia-run establishments employ trafficked workers, but casinos in Las Vegas which belong to Russian mafia employ Russian hostesses as cheap labour and sexual service providers. The FBI claims that Russian mafia syndicates function on the whole territory of US, with a 2006 report revealing 8,000 women forced into prostitution from Slavic republics of former USSR, and 3,000 criminals involved in sexual exploitation.
Victim protection The Russian government demonstrated very limited efforts to protect and assist victims during the reporting period. The government also showed inadequate efforts to identify victims; the majority of assisted victims continued to be identified by NGOs or international organizations. Some municipalities across Russia had cooperation agreements between NGOs and local authorities to refer victims for assistance, though there was no national policy or system of victim referrals. In November 2009, the government failed to allocate funding to prevent the closure of the IOM-run shelter and rehabilitation center in Moscow. The shelter and rehabilitation center opened in March 2006 with foreign funding and assisted 423 victims of both sex and labor trafficking, including men and women, through November 2009; its closing created a significant void in the availability of medical, rehabilitative, and reintegration services for trafficking victims.