Funding for tracking thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia has been terminated by the U.S. State Department, and a U.S. database containing information on the victims may have been erased, according to a letter U.S. lawmakers intend to send to Trump administration officials on Wednesday.
Democratic U.S. lawmakers drafted the letter addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, urging the administration to reinstate the program that aids in tracking the abducted Ukrainian children.
The government-funded initiative, spearheaded by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, that tracked the mass deportation of children from Ukraine has been terminated, leading to a loss of access to significant information – including satellite imagery – on approximately 30,000 children kidnapped from Ukraine.
“We suspect that the data from the repository has been permanently deleted. If confirmed, this would have severe consequences,” stated the letter, spearheaded by Ohio Rep. Greg Landsman.
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A group of Democratic U.S. lawmakers penned a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. (Reuters)
The news about the letter emerged on Tuesday, the same day U.S. President Donald Trump had a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who refrained from agreeing to a 30-day truce in Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
An individual familiar with the tracking program mentioned that the terminated State Department contract resulted in the deletion of $26 million worth of war crimes evidence.
“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,” the source told Reuters.
“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 person added.
The U.S. State Department has ended funding for tracking thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
The letter to administration officials also advocates for sanctions against officials in Russia and Belarus involved in the abduction of children.
“These blatant violations of children’s rights under international law demand consequences,” the letter emphasized.
According to the lawmakers, Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab no longer has access to the satellite imagery necessary to track the abducted children.
“Our government is providing an essential service – one that does not entail the transfer of weapons or cash to Ukraine – in pursuit of the noble goal of rescuing these children. We must, immediately, resume the effort to assist Ukraine in bringing these children home,” the letter stated.
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News of the letter came on Tuesday, the same day U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Getty Images / Fox News Digital)
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The abductions of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without parental consent have been described by Ukraine as a war crime meeting the U.N. treaty definition of genocide.
Russia has argued that it has been evacuating people voluntarily to shield vulnerable children from being caught in the crossfire.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued warrants for the arrest of Lvova-Belova and Putin over the abduction of Ukrainian children, a move Russia criticized as “outrageous and unacceptable.”
Eurojust, Europe’s agency for criminal cooperation, disclosed on Tuesday that the U.S. government was discontinuing its support for the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, which was gathering evidence to prosecute Putin and others. The U.S. special prosecutor at Eurojust, Jessica Kim, would depart as part of this action.
Reuters contributed to this report.
