The United States said on March 26 that it is providing $25 million in new assistance to support the identification, return, and rehabilitation of Ukrainian children “forcibly relocated to Russian-controlled territories.”
“U.S. funding will support two primary types of programs,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement. “First, it will assist reliable partners to identify and track children that have been forcibly transferred away from their home, an essential step in supporting diplomatic and other efforts to facilitate their return. Second, it will support the Ukrainian government and trusted local partners to provide returned children with the care and support they need to recover and rebuild their lives.”
Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, who is visiting the United States, has been calling for the return of children for years.
She met with State Department officials in Washington during her trip and said she was grateful to the administration and to Congress for “making this a priority.”
“Behind every number is a child, a family, a life waiting to be restored. Every Ukrainian child must come home,” she wrote in a March 26 post on X.
The “Bring Kids Back UA” initiative, a program designed to bring back children who had been deported to Russia or confined to Russian-held areas of Ukraine, said that more than 2,000 children had been returned as of March 26.
In a post on social media, it said Ukraine is currently processing 20,570 cases of deported and forcibly transferred children, though it said that “hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children remain under Russian control and the true scale of this crime is still unknown.”
The Epoch Times is unable to independently verify the figures.
A U.N. investigation found earlier this month that Russia’s deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children since Moscow invaded in 2022 constituted crimes against humanity.
The commission said that, so far, it has verified the deportation or transfer of more than 1,200 children from five regions in Ukraine.
The issue has also become a focus for U.S. First Lady Melania Trump.
“As parents, it is our duty to nurture the next generation’s hope. As leaders, the responsibility to sustain our children extends beyond the comfort of a few,” the first lady wrote. “Undeniably, we must strive to paint a dignity-filled world for all—so that every soul may wake to peace, and so that the future itself is perfectly guarded.”
“A child’s soul knows no borders, no flags,” she said at the time. “We must foster a future for our children, which is reached with potential, security, and complete with free will, a world where dreams will be realized rather than threatened by war.”
Three of the children had been in Russia since they were separated from their parents near the frontlines of the fighting, the first lady said.
Among them was a young Russian girl who was returned to her family.
Russia has denied allegations that it has kidnapped or abducted Ukrainian children, saying it had removed them from the theater of war to keep them safe.
Speaking to Russia’s state-run news agency TASS at the time, the Kremlin said the allegations were “outrageous and unacceptable” and said the warrants are “null and void,” as Russia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC.
“Over the four years of the conflict, a total of 27 lists containing 281 names of children and the people searching for them were received through the legally established channel between Russia’s children’s rights commissioner and Ukraine’s ombudsman in Kiev,” Miroshnik said, according to TASS.
“To date, 130 children from 104 families have been reunited with their loved ones and have returned to Ukraine. The same applies to 29 children from 21 families who have returned from Ukraine to their loved ones in Russia.”
