Ukraine is a global surrogacy hub - but that could be about to end

Karina is six months pregnant, but the foetus inside her womb is not her own. The 22-year-old from eastern Ukraine is a surrogate, pregnant with an embryo from a Chinese couple's egg and sperm. At the age of 17 Karina's home was destroyed when her city, Bakhmut, became one of the most fiercely contested battlegrounds in the early phase of Russia's full-scale invasion. With most of the city turned to rubble and ash, she and her partner moved to Kyiv but they struggled to find steady work. It was when Karina was in a shop one day, with barely enough money to pay for bread and nappies for their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, that she decided to turn to paid surrogacy. She says the war "led me to surrogacy" and that without the conflict she would never have considered it. The fighting has led to millions of people losing jobs and businesses, surging inflation and a sharp drop in Ukraine's GDP. "At first, becoming a surrogate made me angry and disappointed, but now I've just accepted it," says Karina Tarasenko who now lives on the outskirts of Kyiv in an apartment provided by her surrogacy clinic. She is pregnant with a girl. She will earn £12,500 ($17,000), roughly double the averag