Women and children are taken from Russia mostly for prostitution. Their number is estimated at 30,000- 60,000 a year [16]. According to the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, over the past two decades, over 500,000 women were sold from Russia to other countries[6]. __(PDF) http://www.carim-east.eu/media/exno/Explanatory%20Notes_2013-55.pdf (PDF)
Modern Slave Nations
http://www.voanews.com/content/china-russia-slam-us-report-on-human-trafficking/1685674.html
Persons closely connected to the Kremlin profit from human slavery, so we cannot expect things to change quickly.
Russia is one of those unfortunate countries that has the receptive environment in which organized crime thrives. Organized crime is deeply rooted in the 400-year history of Russia’s peculiar administrative bureaucracy, but it was especially shaped into its current form during the seven decades of Soviet hegemony that ended in 1991. This ancestry helps to explain the pervasiveness of organized crime in today’s Russia and its close merger with the political system. Organized crime in Russia is an institutionalized part of the political and economic environment. __ Russian Mob and Human Trafficking
Human trafficking in Russia is an ongoing, for-profit enterprise. In other parts of the world, human trafficking is a natural side effect of regional, tribal, and religious warfare.
ISIS members have taken young Azidi girls, raped and sold them off for trivial prices. The girls and women may sell for as little as $25 and sometimes even less…
… Young girls fleeing with their families from the Syrian conflict today have been trafficked in Jordan and other neighboring states, just as occurred with earlier waves of refugees from Iraq. __Trafficking as a Side Effect of War
Across Africa, the enslavement of girls and women has made a strong comeback. The practise is also prominent in Islamic countries such as Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. But no one expects anything else in those places. It is in nations such as Russia that modern westerners may be shocked to see slavery so common and conspicuous.
St. Petersburg has… become a lively center of child prostitution attracting some Western men to take trips there. There have been cases of officials in children’s homes selling Russian children.
Given the scale of human trafficking in and out of Russia, and not only into prostitution but into a range of jobs, the US State Department has criticized Moscow for not making enough convictions of traffickers. Of course, these criminals are sometimes caught, arrested, tried and convicted. But the numbers are relatively low given the scale of the problem. In 2012, available data shows 29 convictions for human trafficking and five for using slave labor. In the end, 26 individuals were sent to prison and seven given suspended sentences. Evidence suggests, however, that not all cases of labor trafficking result in charges.
In 2013, the US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report downgraded Russia from its Tier-2 “Watch List” to its lowest classification of Tier-3. This means that, in the eyes of the State Department, Russia is not sufficiently meeting anti-trafficking standards. __ One Step Forward Two Steps Back
Such a large system of slavery as exists across Russia requires significant organisation — as in ORGANISED CRIME.
Russian organized crime has come to plague many areas of the globe since the demise of the Soviet Union just more than a decade ago. The transnational character of Russian organized crime, when coupled with its high degree of sophistication and ruthlessness, has attracted the world’s attention and concern to what has become known as a global Russian Mafia.
… As with other forms of organized crime, trafficking has globalized. Groups formerly active in specific routes or regions have expanded the geographical scope of their activities to explore new markets. Some have merged or formed cooperative relationships, expanding their geographical reach and range of criminal activities. Illegal migrants and trafficking victims have become another commodity in a larger realm of criminal commerce involving other commodities, such as narcotic drugs and firearms or weapons and money laundering, that generate illicit revenues or seek to reduce risks for traffickers. _Organised Crime Russia
Putin is turning Russia into a national racketeer. Nothing is out of bounds for the mafia state, including selling off its own young people.
The vulnerability of Russian citizens facing recruiters who turn humans into merchandise can be explained by poverty and the failure to find employment. This pushes people towards drastic actions, and makes them use risky economic behavior models and agree to illegal migration, exploitation and slave labor. The grave economic position of these persons lowers their social standards and expands the boundaries of social norms making them unacceptable in terms of human rights and human development [1].
The most vulnerable social groups are: children, adolescents, youth, and young women; villages and small towns dwellers; recent migrants to the cities; people with low education levels; lack of professional education; the unemployed; women engaged in prostitution; persons psychologically inclined towards risky behavior; children from “at risk” families (poor, families of alcoholics, dysfunctional families, persons experiencing family violence etc.); drug addicts; single mothers; persons without permanent residence etc __Human Trafficking Russia (PDF)
More Sources for Human Trafficking in Russia
A more subtle form of “child” trafficking:
14 yo Russian Girls in Japan
http://thefilmstage.com/reviews/tiff-review-girl-model/
al fin next level 
Alfin, you write quite a bit about Russia. What is your relationship with Russia and/or Russian people?
A mafia state “in control” of almost half the world’s supply of nuclear weapons? Who wouldn’t be interested in such a country? To anyone willing to look beneath the Potemkin facade of bombastic bravado, the tragic drama of the place is heart-wrenching.
The end market is Europe. Many countries in Europe have legalized prostitution for adults, but child prostitution has always been a big part of every prostitution market, legal or illegal. The Pakistani community in UK and Moslem communities throughout Europe also run large child prostitution markets. The Koran actually authorizes child brides as young as 9, the age of one of Mohammed’s wives. And Hollywood movie companies are notorious for child rape and abuse by directors and producers as well as top managers.
Child abuse by the Russian mafia is horrific, but their main partner and buyer is the European mafia. It might be noted that in the UK, the law authorities connived with the Pakistani prostitution rings and still do–there have been no prosecutions of the criminals despite the very public nature of the scandal, or rather non-scandal.
This is not a purely Russian problem.
The Russian mafia has infiltrated Europe, the Americas, and much of the rest of the world. It is inter-tied with the Albanian mafia and virtually all other large organised crime outfits — unless it is currently at war with them for market share.
There is no clear separation between the Russian state and the Russian mafia.
Also, Russians seem to have a lot of contempt for Americans:
http://praag.org/?p=17332
We’re in this miserable fix today mainly because of the British obsession with destroying the rising power of Germany in much of the first half of the 20th Century.
Yes, Russians under Putin seem much like children, easily led by the propaganda-meister. The next blog article links to a more comprehensive description of the phenomenon.
Britain and Germany were two competing empires. They only did what competing empires typically do.
Germany and Russia are far more to blame for the conflagrations of WWI and WWII than was Britain. Empires tend to collapse, and obsessing over it does no one any good.
Much better to make constructive plans for the future.
It’s good to know that we are reading the blog of an apologist of imperialism.
It certainly puts things in context.
Judging from your comment, it is highly unlikely that you have been reading much of anything in this or any other Al Fin blog.