The Ukraine - a fledgling nation pretty much still finding its feet nearly 20 years after its independence from the oldSoviet Union. During the global financial crisis Ukraine has suffered badly. In fact, last year it was among the world's worst economic performers. And as if that's not enough, it's now taken on the dubious mantle of the "sex capital" ofEurope. Here's Nick Lazaredes.
REPORTER: Nick Lazaredes
DENIS GRIGORIEV, LOCAL KICKBOXING CHAMPION (Translation): Odessa is famous for... There are sex tours. People know they can have a great time there. Today, this problem touches everybody. We're all aware of it but nothing is done.
It's well after midnight in Ukraine's southern port city of Odessa and I'm being driven through its murkiest parts by a local kickboxing champion who's on a crusade to smash its thriving illicit sex trade.
DENIS GRIGORIEV (Translation) It's not a 'moral' issue, it's an 'immoral' one because a woman shouldn't engage in prostitution. Prostitution is not a solution.
But for a record - tens of thousands of Ukrainian women prostitution is providing a way out of an impoverished life of hardship.
PROSTITUTE (Translation): You can make $200 minimum, $400 maximum.
REPORTER (Translation): Per week?
PROSTITUTE (Translation): Per week.
Throughout Ukraine's cities the same astonishing trend is being repeated. And with a staggering 20,000 full-time prostitutes and twice that number trading their bodies part-time, Ukraine has become Europe's premiere destination for illicit sex.
VICTOR SVYATSKY, FEMEN SUPPORTER (Translation): So today we really have a situation where Ukraine can become a European Thailand, a European Bangkok.
Ukraine's capital, Kiev. Running through the city, its immensely popular grand promenade - Khreschatyk Street. A well-known magnet for its residents, it's now a major hunting ground for foreign sex tourists. It's the second-largest nation in continental Europe but after almost 20 years of independence Ukraineremains one of its poorest and most corrupt. And its abundant supply of vulnerable women has been a real boon to its lucrative sex trade.
'SERGEY', HOTEL SECURITY MAN (Translation): I think it's very bad for Ukrainian women. They humiliate them and they treat them badly.
On the strict condition that his identity not be revealed, the chief of security at one of Kiev's largest private hotels was keen to relate the details of the activities of its foreign guests.
'SERGEY'(Translation): The majority of organised tours come from Italy and Turkey - the majority. They're organised - they drive around town.
He says that every night this upmarket hotel essentially becomes a brothel.
'SERGEY' (Translation): The girls would go to one hotel room and then from that room they'd go to another so they'd service several foreigners in five or six hours. We usually have about 40 girls per night. That's one night in just one hotel, and there are many hotels in Kiev.
What's particularly disturbing is the regular participation of child prostitutes.
'SERGEY' (Translation): There are cases when they bring in not just women, but 13- or 14-year-old girls - that happens all the time. The police just sit on their hands, absolutely.
CROWD (Translation): Ukraine is not a brothel, Ukraine is not a brothel.
With the police doing nothing, Ukraine's young feminists are now leading the charge against the sex trade, and they've adopted some unusual tactics.
CROWD (Translation): We're kind and stunning and as nice as honey! We won't sell ourselves for any sum of money!
And they're not shy about using their own sex appeal to capture public attention.
SASHA (Translation): Yes, of course, we're women and we're beautiful and sexy. Why hide it? It's a weapon. If it can be an additional weapon in our fight against sex tourism and other things, then we're going to use it.
MAN (Translation): Come on, work! Who's going to earn us cash? Move it! Look at these slaves! Long live sex tourism! Sex tourism in Ukraine!
Theatrical displays like this one are just part of the anti-sex-tourism drive being mounted by the feminist group known as FEMEN.
WOMAN: Hello, how are you?
MAN: Hello, fine. Fine.
WOMAN: We are Ukrainian woman's movement fighting against sex prostitution in our country.
In an effort to strike at the heart of the flourishing flesh trade, FEMEN has taken to directly accosting foreign male tourists.
WOMAN: You can read Ukrainian girls are not prostitutes.
MAN: We heard about you in Germany - good luck for this.
While some of the men confronted by the feminists voice their support, others are clearly unimpressed.
MAN 2: I say your country's pretty f----d up - you need to move on and get a life.
WOMAN: I understand.
VICTOR SVYATSKY (Translation): Most men think and speak of prostitution as consumers as people who will go and buy that prostitute tomorrow. And that's horrible.
Returning to the city centre at night, I meet Victor - a young male activist who has investigated the now sophisticated but illegal industry. He says sex tourism is just part of the problem, claiming thatUkraine has already become a major world hub for child pornography.
VICTOR SVYATSKY(Translation): There's data suggesting that 40% of the world's child porn is filmed in Ukraine. I don't care if it's sex tourism, prostitution or pornography - that's flourishing in Ukraine. This situation can't be tolerated and we'll do all we can to change it for the better.
Flush with profits, the sex barons behind this lucrative trade have cornered another market - one with worldwide reach.
REPORTER: What did you discover when you were helping him with the website, and what did you discover about what he was doing?
RUSSELL CUNNING, I.T. CONSULTANT: He had a database of some 22,000 women, and supposedly they were all available for marriage.
Ukraine's shadowy internet-based sex network has become a real money-spinner, but its myriad of seemingly innocent websites offering dating and marriage introductions mask their real trade as online pimps to unwary foreigners.
RUSSELL CUNNING: They'd pay him for introductions and his standard ploy was that he would introduce them to prostitutes who had a vague resemblance to the girl's photos.
REPORTER: Beautiful cobble stones.
Australian Russell Cunning moved to Kiev five years ago. With an I.T. background, he quickly found work as an internet consultant for what he thought was a legitimate marriage agency, but he unwittingly put himself on a collision course with the underworld.
RUSSELL CUNNING: While I was working on the database I discovered that about 20,000 of those women had no contact details, no phone number, no email address.
Recognising that the business was a front for online prostitution, and angered at the deception, Russell foolishly decided to take matters into his own hands.
RUSSELL CUNNING: I wasn't deleting, but I was hiding the profile, like, taking offline the profile of any girl that had no contact details.
Satisfied with crippling their website, Russell moved on - oblivious to the agency's links to Kiev's underworld pimps. But just weeks later, while driving alone on the city's outskirts his knowledge gap was unequivocally closed.
RUSSELL CUNNING: He ran me off the road and when I got out of the car and went and asked him, in good Australian, what his problem was - the door opened and I saw a revolver and he shot me twice - once in the stomach, which just grazed me, and once in the leg.
Nowhere is Ukraine's downward spiral more apparent than here in Odessa. With soaring rates of unemployment and poverty and an escalating drug and alcohol crisis that's one of Eastern Europe's worst, the city is also struggling with the rampant spread of HIV.
REPORTER: That seems like a lot of condoms there.
Thrown into the mix, a virtual army of 6,000 prostitutes.
DOCTOR (Translation): The results are ready. It's negative for syphilis and negative for HIV. She knows there's a window period and that she must use condoms.
Although the health of Odessa's prostitutes are their main priority social workers, like Lyudmila and Natalya, say these vulnerable women face other dangers in a city considered to be one of the most dangerous in continental Europe.
LYUDMILA ZABOLOTNAYA, SOCIAL WORKER (Translation): Let's say one or two men drive by in a car, right? They take a girl to some den. One girl told us once she saw 12 addicts when she arrived. She was alone. She did get out of there, but she was barely alive.
But the horror stories have done little to stem the tide of women flooding into the city to join its ranks of sex workers.
PROSTITUTE (Translation): I know the news won't be bad for me.
DOCTOR (Translation): She had a test literally two weeks ago.
PROSTITUTE (Translation): I feel quite confident. I just do it for my own sake.
As part of the support they provide social workers operate a mobile unit performing rapid tests for HIV and other infections.
DOCTOR (Translation): So we have negative results for both syphilis and HIV. I can't see which is which. So it's fine for now but there's a window period, that lasts from three to six months. You should remember that and use condoms in all circumstances.
PROSTITUTE (Translation): We do use them.
The campaign to kill off their trade means little to prostitutes like Nadia, who laugh off the efforts as a waste of time.
NADYA, PROSTITUTE (Translation): You can fight it all you want. Men will find mistresses and their wives will suffer. With us, he'll visit once each month or six months, but a mistress is for life. It will just ruin families.
But these women remain firmly in the sights of Denis Grigoriev, who says it's time to get tough.
DENIS GRIGORIEV: If today prostitutes and their pimps and so on were punished harshly, half of them would think twice, if it's worth it.
But the crusading kickboxing champion knows that won't be easy, with a criminal industry he claims has deep links to Ukraine's political elite.
DENIS GRIGORIEV (Translation): Our current politicians, in essence, are a large corrupt criminal gang that runs the whole show.
The prevalence of HIV in Ukraine is the highest in Europe and it's estimated that at its current rate within two years more than 1 million will be infected with the virus. Odessa's AIDS statistics are even worse with 70% percent of its 30,000 injecting drug users infected, many of whom are working the sex trade. Alarm bells are already ringing in Europe, where public health officials regard the city as a growing menace. They're worried that Odessa's HIV crisis may combine with the sex trade boom to produce their nightmare scenario, a resurgent and largely uncontrollable HIV epidemic - spread by its own sex tourists as they return to mainland Europe. But the spread of HIV isn't the only problem arising from Ukraine's illicit sex market, and now another scourge is starting to make its mark - the business of child prostitution.
LYUDMILA ZABOLOTNAYA (Translation): I know there were 15- or 16-year-old girls here. But we had no access to them at all. They were protected.
Working through city's sex haunts, the sex-workers mobile patrol are often the first to encounterOdessa's underage prostitutes.
LYUDMILA ZABOLOTNAYA (Translation): They were kept in a car parked around the corner from the clinic. They didn't go there and there was no way to get to them.
With the steady stream of sex tourists Odessa's wicked child sex trade is also expanding, but the pimps providing underage prostitutes keep them well away from prying eyes.
NATALYA, SOCIAL WORKER (Translation): Underage prostitutes work from home more often than not. They have someone to represent them. Well, say it's a pimp. It could be a 'mother' too. It's from home. It's hard to find them out here on the streets.
But in this troubled Black Sea metropolis there is another source for young prostitutes. Largely hidden, but with growing numbers, they are at the grubby bottom end of the flesh trade.
INNA NIKIFOROVAM, CHARITY WORKER (Translation): Their mothers come, the police, other organisations... So we open our albums for them and allow them to search for their kids. That's how they look.
They are Ukraine's lost children.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): All of these are still on the streets.
Whether forced by circumstance or by choice almost 4,000 runaway kids roam Odessa's streets. Drawn from all over Ukraine as well as some from neighbouring Moldova and Russia, they come in the belief that Odessa's reputation as a criminal hub offers the best of chance of survival. Charity worker Inna Nikiforova knows more than most about this vulnerable community at the very bottom rung of Ukrainian society, living like rats in the city's derelict buildings and its sewage system.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): We put together a map and mark where those kids are, where there are open drains and basements.
Most are victims of Ukraine's slowly disintegrating society and although many are never sought by their families those that are quickly come to Inna's attention.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): His mother came over the day before yesterday and asked for help. She went to the police and they passed the request on to us. They will act on it but we tend to find them faster.
Like the team working with sex workers, Inna and her colleagues operate as a mobile patrol squad, moving from one known haunt to the next.
REPORTER: Could you please tell us what this place is?
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): This is a place where kids spend the night. These are younger kids, 14 to 16 years old.
In a city mired in poverty there's little sympathy for a group regarded as a nuisance, forcing these children into a squalid existence.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): This is the place where they sleep. The ground's been dug up. It's all dirty.
It's a wretched lifestyle that only seems to get worse and now - Odessa's most marginalised residents are amongst its sickest.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): When we take doctors we always do HIV tests so we know what happens to the kids.
With Ukraine losing its struggle to contain the AIDS virus, Odessa's street kids are amongst those hardest hit with a large proportion of HIV-positive children that Inna says have already given up hope.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): They say "We'll die anyway. Who needs us? We're disabled, we have no parents, no-one. We have no papers. So we'll die from AIDS... So what?"
DIMA (Translation): Don't film us, motherfucker.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): Dima!
NADYA (Translation): Shut your trap or I'll bash you.
For these homeless kids Inna's mobile patrol with its promise of a hot meal is about the only thing they can count on. But they are a tough bunch.
DIMA (Translation): Take it. I'm clean. Don't be scared. I'm an OK guy.
With an existence that is measured day to day the threat of HIV means little. And as Ukraine's sex trade has flourished, Odessa's street kids have cornered their own market with hundreds of underage girls working as prostitutes on the highway network that rings the city.
NADYA (Translation): Others work the highways, rent places, buy clothes and feel fine. But I'm not like that. I don't like the idea.
Although many homeless girls quickly start working as highway prostitutes in the sex trade's shabbiest sector, those that keep clear of it - like Nadya - are rewarded with only further hardship.
NADYA (Translation): For me it's difficult. Other girls find it easier. They do it on the highways or elsewhere. If it wasn't for the boys I don't know where I'd be. They help me, they get me food, and so on.
In providing support Inna does all she can to prevent the city's street kids from dabbling in its sex trade but it's a difficult task made even harder by a vicious cycle of drug addiction that many are drawn into.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): If a kid ends up with a group of drug addicts, or sniffers, the ones who sniff glue - that's it. Then it becomes really difficult. They come to like that condition. They start injecting drugs, and making money to get them - and they become regular users. There are syringes here, where they slept in summer.
On the edge of the city Inna shows me around an abandoned block which has become a hangout for street kids using drugs and selling sex.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): In summer there were up to eight people here. It was a group, three girls and five boys.
REPORTER: Were those girls working as prostitutes?
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): Yes, they went to the road down here to work. That's how they earn their living - if they're able to walk.
With drug abuse amongst Odessa's street kids reaching a critical point, they're being drawn into the city's flesh trade in greater numbers than ever before. As this illicit industry continues its spread across Ukraine consuming its poorest citizens, those left to mop up its damaging effects are growing weary and, powerless to do anything to stop it, they're starting to lose hope.
LYUDMILA ZABOLOTNAYA (Translation): Our opinion won't change anything, nothing at all.
GEORGE NEGUS: Nick Lazaredes filming and reporting. And Nick's written an extra feature for our website and, in particular, more on the desperate plight of Odessa's street kids.
Reporter/Camera
NICK LAZAREDES
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Field Producer/Translator
ILYA KUZNIATSOU
Editor
WAYNE LOVE
Translations/Subtitling
ELENA MIKHAILIK
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
REPORTER: Nick Lazaredes
DENIS GRIGORIEV, LOCAL KICKBOXING CHAMPION (Translation): Odessa is famous for... There are sex tours. People know they can have a great time there. Today, this problem touches everybody. We're all aware of it but nothing is done.
It's well after midnight in Ukraine's southern port city of Odessa and I'm being driven through its murkiest parts by a local kickboxing champion who's on a crusade to smash its thriving illicit sex trade.
DENIS GRIGORIEV (Translation) It's not a 'moral' issue, it's an 'immoral' one because a woman shouldn't engage in prostitution. Prostitution is not a solution.
But for a record - tens of thousands of Ukrainian women prostitution is providing a way out of an impoverished life of hardship.
PROSTITUTE (Translation): You can make $200 minimum, $400 maximum.
REPORTER (Translation): Per week?
PROSTITUTE (Translation): Per week.
Throughout Ukraine's cities the same astonishing trend is being repeated. And with a staggering 20,000 full-time prostitutes and twice that number trading their bodies part-time, Ukraine has become Europe's premiere destination for illicit sex.
VICTOR SVYATSKY, FEMEN SUPPORTER (Translation): So today we really have a situation where Ukraine can become a European Thailand, a European Bangkok.
Ukraine's capital, Kiev. Running through the city, its immensely popular grand promenade - Khreschatyk Street. A well-known magnet for its residents, it's now a major hunting ground for foreign sex tourists. It's the second-largest nation in continental Europe but after almost 20 years of independence Ukraineremains one of its poorest and most corrupt. And its abundant supply of vulnerable women has been a real boon to its lucrative sex trade.
'SERGEY', HOTEL SECURITY MAN (Translation): I think it's very bad for Ukrainian women. They humiliate them and they treat them badly.
On the strict condition that his identity not be revealed, the chief of security at one of Kiev's largest private hotels was keen to relate the details of the activities of its foreign guests.
'SERGEY'(Translation): The majority of organised tours come from Italy and Turkey - the majority. They're organised - they drive around town.
He says that every night this upmarket hotel essentially becomes a brothel.
'SERGEY' (Translation): The girls would go to one hotel room and then from that room they'd go to another so they'd service several foreigners in five or six hours. We usually have about 40 girls per night. That's one night in just one hotel, and there are many hotels in Kiev.
What's particularly disturbing is the regular participation of child prostitutes.
'SERGEY' (Translation): There are cases when they bring in not just women, but 13- or 14-year-old girls - that happens all the time. The police just sit on their hands, absolutely.
CROWD (Translation): Ukraine is not a brothel, Ukraine is not a brothel.
With the police doing nothing, Ukraine's young feminists are now leading the charge against the sex trade, and they've adopted some unusual tactics.
CROWD (Translation): We're kind and stunning and as nice as honey! We won't sell ourselves for any sum of money!
And they're not shy about using their own sex appeal to capture public attention.
SASHA (Translation): Yes, of course, we're women and we're beautiful and sexy. Why hide it? It's a weapon. If it can be an additional weapon in our fight against sex tourism and other things, then we're going to use it.
MAN (Translation): Come on, work! Who's going to earn us cash? Move it! Look at these slaves! Long live sex tourism! Sex tourism in Ukraine!
Theatrical displays like this one are just part of the anti-sex-tourism drive being mounted by the feminist group known as FEMEN.
WOMAN: Hello, how are you?
MAN: Hello, fine. Fine.
WOMAN: We are Ukrainian woman's movement fighting against sex prostitution in our country.
In an effort to strike at the heart of the flourishing flesh trade, FEMEN has taken to directly accosting foreign male tourists.
WOMAN: You can read Ukrainian girls are not prostitutes.
MAN: We heard about you in Germany - good luck for this.
While some of the men confronted by the feminists voice their support, others are clearly unimpressed.
MAN 2: I say your country's pretty f----d up - you need to move on and get a life.
WOMAN: I understand.
VICTOR SVYATSKY (Translation): Most men think and speak of prostitution as consumers as people who will go and buy that prostitute tomorrow. And that's horrible.
Returning to the city centre at night, I meet Victor - a young male activist who has investigated the now sophisticated but illegal industry. He says sex tourism is just part of the problem, claiming thatUkraine has already become a major world hub for child pornography.
VICTOR SVYATSKY(Translation): There's data suggesting that 40% of the world's child porn is filmed in Ukraine. I don't care if it's sex tourism, prostitution or pornography - that's flourishing in Ukraine. This situation can't be tolerated and we'll do all we can to change it for the better.
Flush with profits, the sex barons behind this lucrative trade have cornered another market - one with worldwide reach.
REPORTER: What did you discover when you were helping him with the website, and what did you discover about what he was doing?
RUSSELL CUNNING, I.T. CONSULTANT: He had a database of some 22,000 women, and supposedly they were all available for marriage.
Ukraine's shadowy internet-based sex network has become a real money-spinner, but its myriad of seemingly innocent websites offering dating and marriage introductions mask their real trade as online pimps to unwary foreigners.
RUSSELL CUNNING: They'd pay him for introductions and his standard ploy was that he would introduce them to prostitutes who had a vague resemblance to the girl's photos.
REPORTER: Beautiful cobble stones.
Australian Russell Cunning moved to Kiev five years ago. With an I.T. background, he quickly found work as an internet consultant for what he thought was a legitimate marriage agency, but he unwittingly put himself on a collision course with the underworld.
RUSSELL CUNNING: While I was working on the database I discovered that about 20,000 of those women had no contact details, no phone number, no email address.
Recognising that the business was a front for online prostitution, and angered at the deception, Russell foolishly decided to take matters into his own hands.
RUSSELL CUNNING: I wasn't deleting, but I was hiding the profile, like, taking offline the profile of any girl that had no contact details.
Satisfied with crippling their website, Russell moved on - oblivious to the agency's links to Kiev's underworld pimps. But just weeks later, while driving alone on the city's outskirts his knowledge gap was unequivocally closed.
RUSSELL CUNNING: He ran me off the road and when I got out of the car and went and asked him, in good Australian, what his problem was - the door opened and I saw a revolver and he shot me twice - once in the stomach, which just grazed me, and once in the leg.
Nowhere is Ukraine's downward spiral more apparent than here in Odessa. With soaring rates of unemployment and poverty and an escalating drug and alcohol crisis that's one of Eastern Europe's worst, the city is also struggling with the rampant spread of HIV.
REPORTER: That seems like a lot of condoms there.
Thrown into the mix, a virtual army of 6,000 prostitutes.
DOCTOR (Translation): The results are ready. It's negative for syphilis and negative for HIV. She knows there's a window period and that she must use condoms.
Although the health of Odessa's prostitutes are their main priority social workers, like Lyudmila and Natalya, say these vulnerable women face other dangers in a city considered to be one of the most dangerous in continental Europe.
LYUDMILA ZABOLOTNAYA, SOCIAL WORKER (Translation): Let's say one or two men drive by in a car, right? They take a girl to some den. One girl told us once she saw 12 addicts when she arrived. She was alone. She did get out of there, but she was barely alive.
But the horror stories have done little to stem the tide of women flooding into the city to join its ranks of sex workers.
PROSTITUTE (Translation): I know the news won't be bad for me.
DOCTOR (Translation): She had a test literally two weeks ago.
PROSTITUTE (Translation): I feel quite confident. I just do it for my own sake.
As part of the support they provide social workers operate a mobile unit performing rapid tests for HIV and other infections.
DOCTOR (Translation): So we have negative results for both syphilis and HIV. I can't see which is which. So it's fine for now but there's a window period, that lasts from three to six months. You should remember that and use condoms in all circumstances.
PROSTITUTE (Translation): We do use them.
The campaign to kill off their trade means little to prostitutes like Nadia, who laugh off the efforts as a waste of time.
NADYA, PROSTITUTE (Translation): You can fight it all you want. Men will find mistresses and their wives will suffer. With us, he'll visit once each month or six months, but a mistress is for life. It will just ruin families.
But these women remain firmly in the sights of Denis Grigoriev, who says it's time to get tough.
DENIS GRIGORIEV: If today prostitutes and their pimps and so on were punished harshly, half of them would think twice, if it's worth it.
But the crusading kickboxing champion knows that won't be easy, with a criminal industry he claims has deep links to Ukraine's political elite.
DENIS GRIGORIEV (Translation): Our current politicians, in essence, are a large corrupt criminal gang that runs the whole show.
The prevalence of HIV in Ukraine is the highest in Europe and it's estimated that at its current rate within two years more than 1 million will be infected with the virus. Odessa's AIDS statistics are even worse with 70% percent of its 30,000 injecting drug users infected, many of whom are working the sex trade. Alarm bells are already ringing in Europe, where public health officials regard the city as a growing menace. They're worried that Odessa's HIV crisis may combine with the sex trade boom to produce their nightmare scenario, a resurgent and largely uncontrollable HIV epidemic - spread by its own sex tourists as they return to mainland Europe. But the spread of HIV isn't the only problem arising from Ukraine's illicit sex market, and now another scourge is starting to make its mark - the business of child prostitution.
LYUDMILA ZABOLOTNAYA (Translation): I know there were 15- or 16-year-old girls here. But we had no access to them at all. They were protected.
Working through city's sex haunts, the sex-workers mobile patrol are often the first to encounterOdessa's underage prostitutes.
LYUDMILA ZABOLOTNAYA (Translation): They were kept in a car parked around the corner from the clinic. They didn't go there and there was no way to get to them.
With the steady stream of sex tourists Odessa's wicked child sex trade is also expanding, but the pimps providing underage prostitutes keep them well away from prying eyes.
NATALYA, SOCIAL WORKER (Translation): Underage prostitutes work from home more often than not. They have someone to represent them. Well, say it's a pimp. It could be a 'mother' too. It's from home. It's hard to find them out here on the streets.
But in this troubled Black Sea metropolis there is another source for young prostitutes. Largely hidden, but with growing numbers, they are at the grubby bottom end of the flesh trade.
INNA NIKIFOROVAM, CHARITY WORKER (Translation): Their mothers come, the police, other organisations... So we open our albums for them and allow them to search for their kids. That's how they look.
They are Ukraine's lost children.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): All of these are still on the streets.
Whether forced by circumstance or by choice almost 4,000 runaway kids roam Odessa's streets. Drawn from all over Ukraine as well as some from neighbouring Moldova and Russia, they come in the belief that Odessa's reputation as a criminal hub offers the best of chance of survival. Charity worker Inna Nikiforova knows more than most about this vulnerable community at the very bottom rung of Ukrainian society, living like rats in the city's derelict buildings and its sewage system.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): We put together a map and mark where those kids are, where there are open drains and basements.
Most are victims of Ukraine's slowly disintegrating society and although many are never sought by their families those that are quickly come to Inna's attention.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): His mother came over the day before yesterday and asked for help. She went to the police and they passed the request on to us. They will act on it but we tend to find them faster.
Like the team working with sex workers, Inna and her colleagues operate as a mobile patrol squad, moving from one known haunt to the next.
REPORTER: Could you please tell us what this place is?
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): This is a place where kids spend the night. These are younger kids, 14 to 16 years old.
In a city mired in poverty there's little sympathy for a group regarded as a nuisance, forcing these children into a squalid existence.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): This is the place where they sleep. The ground's been dug up. It's all dirty.
It's a wretched lifestyle that only seems to get worse and now - Odessa's most marginalised residents are amongst its sickest.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): When we take doctors we always do HIV tests so we know what happens to the kids.
With Ukraine losing its struggle to contain the AIDS virus, Odessa's street kids are amongst those hardest hit with a large proportion of HIV-positive children that Inna says have already given up hope.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): They say "We'll die anyway. Who needs us? We're disabled, we have no parents, no-one. We have no papers. So we'll die from AIDS... So what?"
DIMA (Translation): Don't film us, motherfucker.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): Dima!
NADYA (Translation): Shut your trap or I'll bash you.
For these homeless kids Inna's mobile patrol with its promise of a hot meal is about the only thing they can count on. But they are a tough bunch.
DIMA (Translation): Take it. I'm clean. Don't be scared. I'm an OK guy.
With an existence that is measured day to day the threat of HIV means little. And as Ukraine's sex trade has flourished, Odessa's street kids have cornered their own market with hundreds of underage girls working as prostitutes on the highway network that rings the city.
NADYA (Translation): Others work the highways, rent places, buy clothes and feel fine. But I'm not like that. I don't like the idea.
Although many homeless girls quickly start working as highway prostitutes in the sex trade's shabbiest sector, those that keep clear of it - like Nadya - are rewarded with only further hardship.
NADYA (Translation): For me it's difficult. Other girls find it easier. They do it on the highways or elsewhere. If it wasn't for the boys I don't know where I'd be. They help me, they get me food, and so on.
In providing support Inna does all she can to prevent the city's street kids from dabbling in its sex trade but it's a difficult task made even harder by a vicious cycle of drug addiction that many are drawn into.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): If a kid ends up with a group of drug addicts, or sniffers, the ones who sniff glue - that's it. Then it becomes really difficult. They come to like that condition. They start injecting drugs, and making money to get them - and they become regular users. There are syringes here, where they slept in summer.
On the edge of the city Inna shows me around an abandoned block which has become a hangout for street kids using drugs and selling sex.
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): In summer there were up to eight people here. It was a group, three girls and five boys.
REPORTER: Were those girls working as prostitutes?
INNA NIKIFOROVA (Translation): Yes, they went to the road down here to work. That's how they earn their living - if they're able to walk.
With drug abuse amongst Odessa's street kids reaching a critical point, they're being drawn into the city's flesh trade in greater numbers than ever before. As this illicit industry continues its spread across Ukraine consuming its poorest citizens, those left to mop up its damaging effects are growing weary and, powerless to do anything to stop it, they're starting to lose hope.
LYUDMILA ZABOLOTNAYA (Translation): Our opinion won't change anything, nothing at all.
GEORGE NEGUS: Nick Lazaredes filming and reporting. And Nick's written an extra feature for our website and, in particular, more on the desperate plight of Odessa's street kids.
Reporter/Camera
NICK LAZAREDES
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Field Producer/Translator
ILYA KUZNIATSOU
Editor
WAYNE LOVE
Translations/Subtitling
ELENA MIKHAILIK
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN