In April 2024, Alex, a 45-year-old Australian of Chinese background living on the outskirts of Sydney, contacted Growing Families. His wife was resident in China. Alex had engaged a year earlier in a surrogacy arrangement in Georgia with a company we had never dealt with: Kinderly. His Kazakh surrogate was due to deliver in late October. Alex was looking for our assistance with the complex Australian paperwork required to allow citizenship and a passport for his newborn. His agency had told him not to bother travelling to Georgia until a birth certificate had been issued. Apparently, Kinderly told all clients the same thing given most were Chinese nationals who could only obtain a 30-day visa for Georgia.
Anita, our Concierge Manager, was on the ground in Tbilisi to assist when Alex’s daughter was born. Anita’s communications in the lead up were only with Kinderly’s China or Ukraine office, so she was anxious to vet the Georgia set-up, especially after their management had refused any video calls or to provide confirmation of which staff were supporting infants and intended parents in Georgia.
What began as a routine support request would soon reveal the larger story of Kinderly’s expansion, collapse, and the chaos left in its wake.
Names and identifying details have been changed in some cases to protect individuals’ privacy.
The Initial Red Flags
In October 2024, after repeated requests from Anita, Kinderly finally introduced her to office manager ‘Anastasia’ and her case manager ‘Olga’ on WhatsApp, and she insisted on an office visit.
Upon visiting Kinderly’s Tbilisi office, there was no signage; Anita had to call Anastasia, a 30-something Ukrainian in a Batik-printed kaftan, for directions from the street. Anita thinks she must have been employed because she spoke Ukrainian, Chinese, Georgian, and Russian. Her assistant, Olga spoke English.
‘It was very much like a “pop up” agency,’ Anita recalls. ‘All the staff had was a small Kinderly sign; something you would hold up in the airport arrivals hall.’ The office space appeared makeshift and chaotic. Anastasia brushed aside Anita’s concerns: ‘New office. We have not had time.’
Anita asked to be taken to the birth hospital to check on Alex’s infant. Olga was to escort her. On arrival, a discomforting sight greeted her. There were at least a dozen newborns in cribs waiting for their parents, all swaddled in ill-fitting wraps, beanies pulled down over their eyes. Olga, it turned out, was Ukrainian and could not speak Georgian, so the infant ID tags were unreadable. The local medical officer had to be found to correctly identify Alex’s baby. Meanwhile, Anita went from infant to infant giving each some skin-to-skin contact.
‘When will the parents come?’ Anita asked Olga in horror.
Olga shrugged. ‘The birth certificate is taking a long time for some. So, we tell them to come and meet their baby when we have all the documents.’
Georgian authorities require many notarised documents including those confirming fertilization, a notarized contract and donor consents, and Kinderly, as a foreign agency not used to Georgian requirements, seemed to repeatedly experience delays with birth certificates being issued in the intended parents’ name.
With such a big red flag, Anita immediately raised her concerns with our team. And while Alex’s surrogacy journey was fortunately completed a few months before the issues with Kinderly became more public, the effect of Kinderly’s activities would be terrifying.
Within weeks of completing Alex’s case, we now know that Kinderly stopped paying surrogates’ fees on time, cut off support for daily needs, and moved at least 17 surrogates and ten children into a rundown hostel in one of Tbilisi’s remote districts. A few months later, the Georgia office closed down.
Trapped and Unpaid
Prior to and after Kinderly’s eventual closing, its mismanagement put many surrogates, newborns and intended parents in such dire situations.
Some surrogates reported having to live in the cold, without gas, heating, or hot water during the coldest days of a Georgian winter. Kinderly claimed they had run out of money to even pay rent and utility bills.
“I’m 19 weeks pregnant. I haven’t had gas or hot water for 18 days. I can’t even cook,” reported 34-year-old Dilara.
One 25-year-old surrogate, ‘Ina’ from China, gave birth to a child for a Chinese couple in early January 2025 but waited three months for most of her US$16,000 compensation. Another Tajikistan surrogate in the hostel with her four-year-old son also had not received her payment, despite repeatedly yet unsuccessfully demanding investigators look into violations of their rights.
Kinderly was also reported to owe up to 75,000 Lari to a Georgian birth hospital. Did they simply not have adequate cash reserves or were they siphoning off payments? Whatever was happening, it is foreign surrogates who suffered, unable even to afford the airfare to return to their own country.
It would also seem that these vulnerable women had signed documents in Georgian, which they could not understand, stipulating that their final compensation would not be paid until a birth certificate had been issued in the intended parents’ name and parents had paid their final bill.
And then, there was the donor issue: Egg donors were swapped out without consulting intended parents. One surrogate reported a parent refusing to take the child; another was asked to endure a termination, losing their promised fees in the process. One father only found out his egg donor had been switched weeks after the birth, as he was preparing documents to acquire his newborn’s Chinese passport.
Despite the public outcry and multiple appeals to the police by surrogates in January, February and March, Georgian authorities had still not acted. Not until 3 April 2025, when Radio Liberty published an expose, were they finally motivated to investigate. But a month earlier, Kinderly management had already announced it was bankrupt.
Amy’s Story
In August 2025, four months after Kinderly announced bankruptcy, another Australian Kinderly client, ‘Amy’, and her husband contacted Growing Families. They lived in Wollongong and spoke no English.
It emerged that their child had been born seven weeks earlier in Tbilisi. Their Chinese-speaking agent had assured them that there was no need to travel until the birth certificate was ready. Instead, they were told they could pay an extra US2,500 and their child would be cared for in a ‘confinement centre’ while paperwork was prepared. The couple took the train to Sydney for an urgent meeting.
We had to inform them that Kinderly had gone bankrupt many months earlier. They were at high risk of being scammed. Amy dissolved in tears in front of me. They had lost trust in the entire process. We advised them to travel immediately to Georgia and brought in Georgian legal support.
Indeed, it turned out the ‘confinement centre’ did not exist; the address was a residential apartment. The documentation their agent supplied was also concerning – there were clear signs of documents being tampered with. Worse, the couple had run out of money so begged their parents for the airfare costs to Tbilisi.
When Growth Outpaces Responsibility
Kinderly was founded by a Ukrainian Ruslan Timoshenko and an Armenian, Armen Melikyan in Ukraine in 2018.
In 2022, after the Russian invasion, the company opened branches in Georgia and Armenia. The agency was upfront about its modus operandi: it imported surrogates from countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Ukraine, and Russia. Its client base came from post-Soviet countries, China, Australia and Europe.
Kinderly’s first Georgian delivery was in January 2024. It remains unclear how many engaged with the company, but in the next 12 months since, around 100 further Kinderly surrogates would give birth in Georgia.
Kinderly owner Ruslan Tymoshenko would admit in February 2025 that the business took on too many cases too quickly. ‘Too many contracts were signed for apartments for surrogate mothers, which is why the financial reserve was exhausted.’ By March 2025, Kinderly management had already announced it was bankrupt.
On 2 October, Georgian media announced that the Anti-Trafficking and Illegal Migration Division of the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime of the Central Criminal Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs had arrested Kinderly owner Armen Melikyan, charging him with embezzlement and misappropriation of ‘a large amount of money’ from Chinese intended parents.
Instead of using the money received to cover surrogates’ medical and daily expenses, rent and remuneration, the owners have been charged with siphoning off these funds. The offences carry a prison sentence of up to 11 years. Ruslan Tymoshenko was similarly charged in absentia.
Protecting Yourself
This problem with Kinderly is a problem globally. There are agencies in Greece, the US, Canada, Argentina, Kenya and Ukraine that have also taken on too many cases, misappropriated client monies, gone bankrupt, mistreated surrogates or skipped essential screening.
Growing Families strongly recommends avoiding organisations which rely on foreign surrogates and those where you cannot have direct contact with your surrogate. Ensure you understand the track record of a provider: how many years in operation and how long staff have been employed. The are some reputable agencies in Georgia.
In light of this, in August 2025, Growing Families launched a Verified Providers program, asking providers of surrogacy services to demonstrate their experience, staffing, client numbers, operational practices, client protections, insurances, complaints mechanisms along with recent client referees who can vouch for their experience. It is concerning to see significant numbers of providers refusing to provide such crucial information. In the absence of global regulation, we believe that these initiatives are vital in order to better protect vulnerable surrogates, newborns and intended parents.
