State-owned Russian media agency RIA Novosti writes on Telegram:
“Kyiv is using wounded Ukrainian soldiers as organ donors, according to [Security Council Secretary Nikolay] Patrushev.
As he says, there have been reports of wounded AFU fighters having their organs removed for further transplantation.
‘Incidentally, Zelensky signed a law last year allowing human organ transplantation without consent,’ added the Security Council Secretary.”
However, there is no such law in Ukraine. In December 2021, the Supreme Rada passed a law “On amending certain Ukrainian laws regulating the matters of human organ and tissue transplantation”, which abolished the requirement for mandatory notarization of one's consent for post-mortem organ donation. The Kremlin propaganda attempted to spin it as permission for any non-consensual transplantation: thus, in April 2022, Izvestia released an article titled “Transplantation Without Consent Made Legal”. These are false accusations: the current Ukrainian law “On applying anatomical material transplantation on human patients” reads:
“The Unified State Information System of Organ and Tissue Transplantation contains data on:
1) the declaration of will of the person who becomes a post-mortem donor of human anatomical materials; their consent to or refusal of post-mortem donation.
2) the declaration of will of their spouse, close relative (child, parent, or sibling), or the person in charge of the funeral arrangements for the person that signed up, in line with the present Law, for the extraction of their organs and tissues for transplantation or the production of bioimplants from the body of the deceased individual.”
In June 2023, the Ukrainian portal Vikna released a guide titled “You Can Donate Your Organs Too! Learn about Post-Mortem Donation and How to Save a Life”:
“Filling out the application takes ten minutes or so. All you need to do is find the nearest office with the transplantation coordinator, call to make an appointment, and bring your passport. A potential donor must be of age and legally capable.
If you change your mind, you can always withdraw your application, and then submit it again – as many times as you like. …
Importantly, not everyone who submitted such an application will become a donor after their passing.
Only those diagnosed with brain death are considered for potential donation. The diagnosis means that the brain is no longer functional, but the donor’s body is supported by artificial means such as a ventilator.
This is normally the case for patients who died from a stroke or fatal injuries, for instance, after a car accident. At the time of death, the patient has to have been in a medical institution, allowing the doctors to run the mandatory tests, extract their organs, and locate the recipient.
Of course, the procedure requires consent either from the patient, submitted before their death, or from their next of kin. …
Notably, under Ukrainian law, combatants and civilians killed in the war cannot be considered as donors.”
Fake news about illegal transplant surgeons who harvest organs from killed Ukrainian soldiers is widespread and has many a time been debunked, but Patrushev went further and placed the blame on the Ukrainian state. He lacks originality, too: Izvestia launched their attack over a year ago.