“Tourists are coming with money, and girls from outside Kiev will try to be here. We are seeing a worsening of the criminal situation,” said Vasyl Poshtak, the head of department on combating human trafficking of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.”We have drawn up a plan to carry out checks at hotels, night clubs, massage parlours and streets where prostitutes work … we will follow the situation,” he said.But he added: “We will do our best, but this is like tilting at windmills.”Femen, whose female activists strip to the waist in public to dramatize their cause, have carried out topless protests against the Euro tournament by trying to seize the Euro soccer cup which is being taken on a tour of the Ukrainian provinces.Prostitution was decriminalized in Ukraine in 2005 and is punishable now by a light fine. This was a “serious mistake,” he said.According to Ukrainian social organizations, about 1.5 million Ukrainians are involved in the sex industry and 20 per cent of them are under 18, the legal age for sexual contact in Ukraine.In the eyes of many foreigners, Ukraine is a country of available and cheap woman and many social groups say indifference by police — and even connivance by them in prostitution rackets — is the main problem.”Ukraine now is looked on as a shopwindow of erotic or sexual products,” said Vasyl Kostytsky, head of Ukraine’s national commission for public morality.”Prostitution is dangerous for foreigners. Their property can get stolen, they can get AIDS. If problems arise, the only loser in all this will be the image of the state,” he said.
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