Online human trafficking recruitment during Russia's war in Ukraine

While I wait for my next round of book revisions I am starting work on the next article in our  NSF project that looks at online human trafficking recruitment during Russia's war in Ukraine. This article analyzes the suspicious Telegram data and compares that to interviews from anti-trafficking stakeholders focusing on recruitment dynamics in Ukraine during the full-scale invasion. We examine what recruitment looks like during the war in Ukraine. I am working on the literature review now and it's so interesting to see all of the publications on recruitment that have been published since we started work on this project in 2023. 

In the data we compiled on recruitment we found that approximately 15.5% of the total messages on the different Telegram groups were suspicious and could be potential cases of recruitment for human trafficking. The article discusses the array of suspicious recruitment messages that we found in the Telegram Groups including posts over the first 18 month’s with word frequencies, levels of vulnerability, and posts by potential traffickers and victims. Then we compare this with interview data focused on what 10 different organizations working on the ground in Central and Western Ukraine see with human trafficking recruitment. These organizations are in the border regions of Western Ukraine and formally occupied territories in Central Ukraine and show what recruitment methods and trafficking dynamics their clients have experienced. They saw evidence of forced deportations, illegal conscription, and abductions and while attention has fallen on sex trafficking, forced labor including forced begging is more prevalent. Hoping to finish this article by the end of summer!