The TelegraphThe Telegraph
People wait to board a bus at the border checkpoint in Medyka after fleeing Ukraine - Reuters/Yara Nardi
People wait to board a bus at the border checkpoint in Medyka after fleeing Ukraine - Reuters/Yara Nardi

Sex traffickers are taking advantage of young women and children who have fled the war in Ukraine.

More than a million refugees have flooded into central Europe in order to escape Vladimir Putin and his troops.

Sources told The Telegraph that police have made multiple arrests in the area of suspected traffickers preying on vulnerable woman and children with the promise of a lift and accommodation.

The authorities are concerned about gangs trying to lure vulnerable refugees to Germany for sexual exploitation.

Overwhelmed by the human tide crossing into Poland, officers are asking humanitarian volunteers at the Medyka checkpoint to demand proof of identities for men offering lifts to young women.

Tom Bell, one British volunteer, said that a lot of desperate Ukrainins have gone on to Facebook or Telegram to find people in Europe who can help them.

They are picked up in a car by someone they have never met and don't know.

The police have put me and other volunteers on alert, because they want us to check people's IDs to see who they are if they pick up younger women and children.

We have been told it is a sex trade thing.

Mr Bell said vigilance had increased.

There is a semi-formal network at the railway and road border crossings.

There is nothing that can stop people from intercepting tired new arrivals.

Refugees are directed to onwards transport and accommodation, but there are fears they are being intercepted by sex traffickers - AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu
Refugees are directed to onwards transport and accommodation, but there are fears they are being intercepted by sex traffickers - AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu

Save the Children warned last week that at least 400,000 young people were moving across eastern Europe, putting them at risk of abuse.

More than 40 per cent of refugees who have fled the fighting to Poland are children, according to the organisation.

Polish authorities have been fighting human smuggler gangs in the last year. Migrants from the Middle East have been directed into the European Union by Alexander Lukashenko.

A police source at Medyka said that they were concerned about the exploitation of children and women coming over the border.

Some people have been arrested after trying it, and we know of a few examples.

Poland has increased its efforts to make sure children entering the country are accounted for.

All-night courts have been taking place to approve legal guardianships of adults who want to look after non-related children in Poland.

Mr Bell was assigned to look after Maks Kowalenko, a nine-year-old Ukranian boy who Mr Bell went into the war zone to rescue.

The Polish border guards sat Maks and me in a room for almost all night while they spoke to his mother to make sure I was who I said I was.

He said that he didn't expect to be adopting a child, but that he told Maks' family that in a worse-case scenario that the war wouldn't end.

Lauren Agnew is a human trafficking policy expert at the social policy charity Care. She warned governments to be aware of the dangers we face.

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