Trump administration terminates program to track Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia
The topic of abduction and forced deportation of Ukrainian children by Russia is one of the most painful and acute in the current war. In recent years, this tragedy has turned into a systematic war crime that causes horror and outrage around the world. Thousands of Ukrainian children were taken from the temporarily occupied territories — from the Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions — to Russia or Crimea controlled by it. They are enrolled in schools and kindergartens, resettled in so-called “re-education” camps, their personal data is changed, they are separated from their parents and forcibly imposed a Russian identity.
In Ukraine, these actions are called genocide and a war crime. The International Criminal Court has already recognized these crimes and issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. However, the scale of the tragedy is so great that even these international solutions could not stop mass abductions of children. That is why initiatives have emerged in the world that should help Ukraine track the whereabouts of kidnapped children and collect evidence of crimes in order to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Of particular importance was the program coordinated by the Humanities Research Laboratory at Yale University (Yale HRL) with the support of the US government. It has become a powerful tool for gathering information about abducted children and their movement through the territory of Russia and the occupied regions. Thanks to modern technologies, in particular satellite images, it was possible to trace the fate of almost 30 thousand Ukrainian children. The program accumulated a huge array of evidence of how Russia systematically deports and turns Ukrainian children into “Russian citizens.”
However, unexpectedly for many, this work was under threat. As informs Reuters citing its sources, the administration of US President Donald Trump stopped funding this program. The decision was made during budget cuts. This caused concern both among American politicians and in Ukraine, because without support, the program risks losing the collected data, and with it – important evidence of Russian war crimes.
Democratic US lawmakers have already strongly criticized such a move. They called on the Trump administration to immediately restore funding for the program, because it is not just a technical or bureaucratic initiative, but the fate of thousands of Ukrainian children and issues of justice. In an appeal to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, the lawmakers emphasized that stopping this program means effectively destroying evidence of Russian war crimes against Ukrainian children.
They emphasized that the restoration of this program is not only a humanitarian duty of the United States, but also a critically important step in the fight for justice and the prosecution of those responsible for deportations. According to the American deputies, only the continuation of monitoring will preserve the chances of the children’s return to their families and a real international trial against those who organized these crimes.
In addition, lawmakers are pushing for sanctions against Russian and Belarusian officials directly involved in the displacement and abduction of children. They emphasize that without real punishment for the organizers and perpetrators of these crimes, Russia will continue to ignore international law and increase pressure on Ukraine by destroying the most vulnerable – Ukrainian children.
Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to record new facts of abduction and deportation of children. According to the official information of the Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, in the summer of 2024 alone, the Russian occupiers deported more than three thousand children from the Kherson region, under the guise of so-called “rehabilitation” and “rest” programs. In fact, the children were taken to remote Russian regions, where they were forced to speak Russian, culture, and change their personal data.
In general, according to open data, about four thousand Ukrainian children were sent to study in schools in the occupied Crimea, and more than 800 to kindergartens in this region. In addition, thousands of children from various occupied regions were distributed to Russian camps, where instead of the promised rest, cultural and educational activities with an ideological color and active “re-education” await them.
In Ukraine, these actions of Russia are officially classified as one of the most serious war crimes – genocide. Returning these children home remains one of the key tasks of the Ukrainian authorities and the international community. And that is why the termination of the program for tracking abducted children looks like a blow in the back to all the efforts that are being made today to protect Ukrainian children.
U.S. legislators state directly: without this program, Ukraine may lose the chance to save thousands of children and help their families return to safety. In their address, they emphasized that the responsibility for such decisions lies not only with the US administration, but also with the entire world community.
Ukraine and the world will continue to demand that international organizations, governments and human rights organizations continue to put pressure on Russia and make every effort to return the kidnapped children home. Every day of delay is worth broken destinies and lost childhood years that will never come back.
