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Eight Ukrainian children who were kidnapped from their families and held hostage in Russia have been returned to Ukraine after back-channel negotiations Between Melania Trump and Russian representativesthe first lady said on Friday.
Trump, a former model who was born in what is now Slovenia when the country was part of what was then Yugoslavia, made the surprise announcement in the Grand Foyer of the White House. He told reporters, “Very [had] The revelations came after he sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin in August about the fate of thousands of children who were seized by Russian forces and taken to Russia during the invasion of Ukraine.
He said Putin had responded in writing to signal his “willingness to engage directly” with the first lady and provide her with “details about Ukrainian children living in Russia.”
“Since then, President Putin and I have had an open channel of communication regarding the welfare of these children,” he said.
Trump also told reporters that “both sides” of the talks had participated in “numerous back-channel meetings and calls” and had “agreed to cooperate with each other for the benefit of everyone involved in this war.”
Additionally, he said his “representative” was working directly with President Putin’s team to ensure the safe reunification of children with their families between Russia and Ukraine, starting with eight children who were “reunified with their families” in the past 24 hours.
Trump said that three of those eight children were “separated from their parents and displaced to the Russian Federation due to frontline fighting” while the other five were “separated from family members across the borders due to the conflict”, with one of the five children being a Russian girl who was deported back to Russia.
Although the First Lady described the children as being “separated from their parents” due to “frontline fighting” as if it was an accident, Ukrainian officials and human rights groups have documented that Russian forces have actively seized Ukrainian children and forcibly deported them to Russia.
While the exact number of missing children remains unclear, the Institute for War Studies informed In March Ukraine verified that approximately 19,500 children had been deported by Russia. But the research nonprofit said: “The real figure is likely much higher, as Russia often targets vulnerable children without anyone to speak up for them.”
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued a Arrest warrant for PutinAccused him of war crimes of illegally deporting children and illegally transferring them from occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia. The Russian government has denied the allegations.
Trump said that over the past three months, Moscow has “demonstrated a willingness to disclose objective and detailed information” about the children, including biographical details and photographs, as well as what he called an “overview of the social, medical and psychological services” provided to them while they were in captivity – including a “detailed report” on eight children who were part of a recent repatriation effort.
He also said that the US government has confirmed the information provided in cooperation with the Ukrainian government.
The work outlined by the first lady on Friday is not her first involvement in shaping the US response to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.
Over the summer, President Donald Trump revealed that his wife had been reminding him of Russia’s frequent attacks against Ukrainian civilian targets.
In an appearance in the Oval Office in July, she told reporters she would consider it regularly after describing her phone call with Putin in positive terms.
“I go home, I say to the first lady, ‘I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a very good conversation.’ And she says, ‘Oh, actually, another city was just hit,'” he said at the time.
Ms Trump said her work on the fate of abducted Ukrainian minors would be an “ongoing mission” and that it was an “important initiative” for her. She said that moving forward she would “work to optimize the transparent free-flow exchange of health information around all child victims of this war and to facilitate regular communication of children with their families until everyone returns home.”
He said plans were underway to bring more children from Russia back to Ukraine “in the immediate future”, and added that Russia had agreed to return adults who were abducted when they were minors but have since turned 18.