Is it safe to use a Ukrainian dating site?
It depends on the site, and on how you use it — and the risk is not in the country. The FTC, the FBI, Europol and UK police describe the same scam in the same words wherever it happens: a false or borrowed identity, trust built fast, a reason a meeting is impossible, then money (FTC; FBI; Europol; Action Fraud). What the international, pay-per-letter part of the industry adds is a travel story that sounds plausible because there really is a border in the way, and a payment model that a dishonest site can abuse from the inside. Both can be checked.
For how an honest site of this kind is supposed to work day to day, see how dating in Ukraine works on AnnaBrides: letters, video calls and prices.
The scams that actually happen
Fake profiles with borrowed photographs
A profile built on pictures taken from someone else's social media or a portfolio, run by a person who is not the woman in them. The FBI and UK police advise a reverse image search for exactly this reason (FBI; Action Fraud). Professional photographs are normal on an agency-backed site, so the photo alone proves nothing either way; what a fake profile cannot do is appear on a live video call.
Letters written to keep you paying
Pay-per-letter is a legitimate alternative to a subscription, but it can be abused: identical warm letters to hundreds of men, replies that never answer your question, a correspondence that stays affectionate and goes nowhere. Sometimes that is a crime, sometimes a badly run agency; either way it costs credits and tells you nothing. The test is whether she answers what you asked and will take a short video call. On AnnaBrides, "the same text sent to many members" is one of the three patterns moderators look for, with requests for money and early requests to move to another app (profile verification).
The ticket, the visa and the "agency fee"
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv describes the version it hears about most: money sent to a person or an agency so that a woman can visit for marriage or study; the requests grow — visa, tickets, insurance, a problem at the border — and when the man becomes suspicious, contact stops. The embassy adds that money already sent is probably not recoverable, and that even where the woman exists and wants to visit, a visa is unlikely to be issued on that basis (US Embassy Kyiv). Real travel is booked by the traveller with her own money, after several video calls, in a third country — see meeting in person abroad.
The emergency, and the move to WhatsApp
A hospital bill, a phone so you can keep talking, a parcel at customs: the FTC lists these because they are the stories reported most (FTC), and since 2022 they follow the news, which is precisely why the rule about money cannot have exceptions. Europol notes what follows if you hesitate — the tone changes, and pressure, guilt or threats appear (Europol). The request usually comes after a move to a messaging app; police note that fraudsters prefer encrypted apps (Met Police), because a site can see patterns and remove profiles and a private chat cannot. On AnnaBrides, what happens off the site is invisible to moderators until you report it.
How to tell an honest site from a dishonest one
Much of the damage in this category is done by sites, not by individual scammers, and a site can be checked before you pay anything — on public pages, without registering:
- a named company, with a number and address, that a public register confirms;
- prices before registration, and the same prices at checkout;
- a plain statement on renewal — nothing that renews, tops up or converts without telling you;
- a refund policy you can read;
- a moderation process described with its limits — "100% verified" with no description of how is a slogan;
- a way to report to a person, and video inside the site;
- no feature for sending money to members. The FTC's first rule — never send money to someone you have not met in person (FTC) — is easier to keep on a site that has no way to break it.
Two guides turn that into a scorecard for any site: how to choose a Ukrainian dating site (eleven criteria, no ranking) and the international dating safety checklist (twenty yes/no checks).
How to check a profile
A site checks a profile at a point in time; whether the person writing today is the person in the profile is your job, in three steps. Reverse image search the main photograph and see whether it appears under another name (FBI; Action Fraud). Ask the same ordinary question twice, a week apart. Then ask for a short video call inside the site, and another a week later — a live conversation in which she reacts to what you just said is the one thing a borrowed photograph cannot supply. How to verify someone on a dating site and why the video call comes before any plans go through each step.
What AnnaBrides actually does — and does not
So that you can hold this site to the list above; each point names the page where you can check it.
- Every new woman's profile: a moderator reviews it — some before it appears, the rest once they are live, and any of them can be taken down — photographs, text, age, duplicates — and a profile that turns out to be false is removed (profile verification).
- Identity check: an identity document and a short video recorded on the spot from a one-time link, so the recording cannot be an old file. It covers some profiles and not others; the page says plainly not to assume that any particular profile has been through it.
- Afterwards: any member can report a profile or a message; a person reads it; a profile that asks for money is removed. Not checked: intentions, background, and anything that happens off the site.
- Money: no feature for sending money to a member; everything you buy is paid to the site in credits; a request for money is a request to go around the site (dating safety).
- Pricing: joining, browsing and reading every letter are free; credits are bought once, and a membership level bought on the website is a one-month package — one payment for one month, nothing renews on its own and no money is taken again (in the Android application the same level is a Google Play subscription that renews until cancelled); credits spent on letters, chat or calls that took place are not refundable, while unspent credits and mistaken charges are looked at case by case (pricing).
- Who runs it: ANNABRIDES LTD, company number 17430138, London; support is a person (about).
How common is this?
In 2023 people in the United States reported losing about 1.14 billion dollars to romance scams, with a median loss of about 2,000 dollars (FTC Data Spotlight). In 2024 the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 672 million dollars in reported losses to confidence and romance fraud, 389 million of it from people over sixty (IC3), and Americans reported losing more to scams paid by bank transfer or cryptocurrency than by every other method combined (FTC, 2025) — which is why a request to pay that way is, on its own, the clearest single warning sign.
If you have already been scammed
- Stop, and do not send "one more" payment — not to release a ticket, not to recover what was sent. UK police warn that fraudsters re-contact victims offering to recover their money (Action Fraud).
- Keep everything — messages, profile address, receipts — and file a police report so that the case is documented (Europol).
- Tell your bank or payment company at once; a recent transfer can sometimes be stopped (FTC; Action Fraud).
- Report the profile to the site (FTC). On AnnaBrides, write to support with the profile address; you do not need to be sure.
- Report to your national fraud service: ReportFraud.ftc.gov or the FBI's IC3 in the United States (FTC; FBI); Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 in the UK, Police Scotland on 101 in Scotland (Action Fraud); your local police in the EU (Europol).
Europol puts it plainly: being targeted is not a personal failure (Europol). What protects you is not suspicion of everyone but a few fixed habits — no money before you have met, video before plans, the conversation kept where it can be seen — and the safety checklist puts them in a form you can print.
This guide is part of the AnnaBrides dating safety hub. On this site money never changes hands between members — there is no feature for it — so any request for money is, by definition, a request to leave the site.