Democratic U.S. lawmakers are calling on President Donald Trump’s administration to restore funding for a program that helps track Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.
According to Ukrinform, this was reported by Reuters, citing a joint letter from the Congress members.
“Our government is providing an essential service – one that does not require the transfer of weapons or cash to Ukraine – in pursuit of the noble goal of rescuing these children. We must, immediately, resume the work to help Ukraine bring these children home,” the lawmakers’ letter said.
According to the lawmakers, the Trump administration halted federal funding for an initiative led by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), which had been tracking the mass deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
The decision means that researchers lost access to large amounts of data, including satellite images and other information on approximately 30,000 children taken from Ukraine.
“We have reason to believe that the data from the repository has been permanently deleted. If true, this would have devastating consequences,” the letter states.
A person familiar with the program said that the cancellation of the State Department’s contract with Yale HRL had resulted in the deletion of $26 million of war crimes evidence, which could have helped prosecute Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“They took $26 million of U.S. taxpayers money used for war crimes data and threw it into the woodchipper, including the dossiers on all the children. If you wanted to protect President Putin from prosecution, you nuke that thing. And they did it. It’s the final court-admissible version with all the metadata,” the source said.
Additionally, the House of Representatives members are urging the Trump administration to impose sanctions on officials in Russia and Belarus involved in the abduction of Ukrainian children.
It is noted that in March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, over the abduction of Ukrainian children.
As Ukrinform previously reported, the White House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by billionaire Elon Musk, terminated funding for the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which had been aiding in the search for Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.
Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg
Source: U.S. lawmakers urge Trump to restore funding for program tracking abducted Ukrainian children
