UNITED NATIONS, September 12. /TASS/. Trading in organs is common practice in Ukraine and the country’s law only encourages it, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said on Tuesday.

"Ukrainians also fall victim to organ trafficking," he said at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Western weapons supplies to Ukraine. "We have more and more evidence of black market transplants being practiced in the country."

According to the Russian diplomat, Ukraine is forming a legal framework actually encouraging this. "Thus, under the recently passed law on transplantation, no notarized written consent for transplantation from a living donor or his or her relatives is now needed. Nor is it required to verify the authenticity of signatures," he noted. "As a matter of fact, it is possible to extract organs from children as well. The procedure for taking organs for those who did not give consent to donate them while alive has been simplified."

"It looks like the Ukrainian state is covering a bloody business. Are our former Western partners going to ring the alarm? I don’t think so," Nebenzya added.