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Girls: Alena (33) was born in Ukraine and raised in an orphanage. She moved from Donetsk to St Petersburg after the war in Ukraine, thinking that she was being offered work as an administrator in a brothel, only to find that the job was as a sex worker, September 22, 2017. Sex workers pictured in their apartments, in St Petersburg, Russia. Official statistics say that there are one million sex workers in Russia. Silver Rose, a St Petersburg NGO, puts that at closer to three million, with more than 50,000 women working in St Petersburg alone. Prostitution is illegal in Russia, and though fines are not large (about €28) women are vulnerable to extortion because they fear the consequences of having a criminal record. According to Silver Rose, despite the stereotypical view of sex workers, only a small percentage have taken to prostitution because they are addicts or living in extreme poverty. The decline of the Russian economy has led to a growing number of women—many over the age of 35—who have lost jobs in such fields as business or education becoming sex workers. (Photo by Tatiana Vinogradova/World Press Photo)
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