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Eight Ukrainian children who were kidnapped from their families and held captive in Russia have been returned to Ukraine after back-channel negotiations between First Lady Melania Trump and Russian representatives, the First Lady said on Friday.
Ms Trump, a former model who was born in what is now Slovenia when that country was part of the former Yugoslavia, made the stunning announcement in the Grand Foyer of the White House. She told reporters “much [had] unfolded” since she sent a letter in August to Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding the fate of the thousands of children who’ve been taken to Russia after being seized by Russian forces during the attempted invasion of Ukraine.
She said Putin had responded in writing to signal a “willingness to engage” with the First Lady “directly” and provided her with “details regarding the Ukrainian children residing in Russia.”
“Since then, President Putin and I have had an open channel of communication regarding the welfare of these children,” she said.
Ms Trump also told reporters that “both sides” of the talks had participated in “several back channel meetings and calls” and had “agreed to cooperate with each other for the benefit of all people involved in this war.”
Additionally, she said her “representative” had been “working directly with President Putin’s team to ensure the safe reunification of children with their families between Russia and Ukraine,” starting with eight such children who have been “rejoined with their families” over the last 24 hours.
Of those eight, Ms Trump said three had been “separated from their parents and displaced to the Russian Federation because of frontline fighting” while the other five had been “separated from family members across borders because of the conflict,” with one of the five children being a Russian girl who was repatriated to Russia.
Although the First Lady described the children as having been “separated from their parents” because of “frontline fighting” as if by accident, Ukrainian officials and human rights groups have documented evidence 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 the Study of War reported in March Ukraine verified nearly 19,500 children have been deported by Russia. But the research non-profit said, “The true figure is likely to be much higher because Russia frequently targets vulnerable children without anyone to speak for them.”
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin, accusing him of the war crimes of unlawfully deporting children and unlawfully transferring them from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia. The Russian government has denied the allegations.
Ms Trump said Moscow had over the last three months “ demonstrated a willingness to disclose objective and detailed information” about the children, including biographical details and photographs plus what she called an “overview of the social, medical and psychological services” provided to them while in captivity — including a “detailed report” on the eight children who were part of the recent repatriation effort.
She also said the U.S. government had confirmed the information provided in cooperation with Ukraine’s government.
The work outlined by the First Lady on Friday is not the first involvement she has had in shaping the American response to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.
Over the summer, President Donald Trump revealed that his wife had been frequently reminding him of Russia’s continuous strikes against Ukrainian civilian targets.
At one Oval Office appearance in July, he told reporters that she would routinely weigh in after he described his phone calls with Putin in positive terms.
“I go home, I tell the first lady, ‘I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation.’ And she says, ‘Oh really, another city was just hit’,” he said at the time.
Ms Trump said her work on the fates of the kidnapped Ukrainian minors would be an “ongoing mission” that is an “important initiative” for her, and said moving forward she would be working to “optimize a transparent free flow exchange of health related information surrounding all children who have fell victim to this war, and to facilitate the regular communication of children with their families until each individual returns home.”
She added that plans were underway to return more children to Ukraine from Russia “in the immediate future” and said Russia had further agreed to return adults who were kidnapped while they were minors but have since turned 18 in captivity.