When Donald Trump met Vladimir Putin in Alaska last Friday, he brought the Russian president a rare message from the US first lady.
Melania Trump sent a personal letter to Russia’s president asking him to “protect the innocence of children”.
Although the letter had no direct reference to Russia’s raging war against Ukraine, it was widely perceived as an act of soft power diplomacy from the US first lady regarding one of the most heartbreaking aspects of Moscow’s full-scale invasion — the forceful deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Ukraine has been able to verify Russia’s deportation of over 19,500 children to date. Only over 1,350 have been returned, and each return is mediated by a third-party state, notably by Qatar, South Africa and the Vatican.
The actual figure is likely to be much higher. Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab placed the number of deported Ukrainian children closer to 35,000. Moscow claimed that the number could be as high as 700,000.
Mariana Betsa, deputy foreign minister of Ukraine, told Euronews, “We are grateful for President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump’s recognition and focus on ensuring the return of Ukrainian children, as this is central to any peace negotiations.”
“In particular, First Lady Zelenska is very grateful for First Lady Trump highlighting the issue to President Trump directly,” Betsa said.
At the start of his meeting with Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the US first lady for sending it, and said she had been appealing to Putin “about our children, abducted” during Russia’s war.
Zelenskyy then handed a visibly surprised US president a follow-up letter from Olena Zelenska to deliver to Melania Trump.
The content of the letter has not been disclosed, but the US president praised his wife’s love for children and said she was deeply concerned by images of children suffering.
“She sees the heartbreak, the parents, the funerals that you see on television, always funerals,” Trump said. “We want to see something other than funerals.”
Ukrainian authorities have been insisting that the return of Ukrainian children is a non-negotiable aspect of any possible deal to put an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine, and probably for the first time, this message has been clearly and loudly echoed by Kyiv’s allies in the US and Europe.
‘Every child should be unconditionally returned back home’
Children are always the most vulnerable victims of armed conflict, Betsa told Euronews.
“In Russia’s war, Ukrainian children have not only undergone trauma and displacement they have also suffered systemic deportation, illegal adoption and forced assimilation,” she explained.
During the Istanbul talks between Kyiv and Moscow in Istanbul, Ukraine handed over to Russia a list of its forcefully deported children.
Kyiv wants Moscow to return them to Ukraine, reiterating its commitment to bring the forcefully deported children back as one of the key aspects of a possible ceasefire and a peace deal in the long term.
The head of the Ukrainian delegation Rustem Umerov said, “If Russia is genuinely committed to a peace process, the return of at least half the children on this list is positive”.
The Russian delegation chief Vladimir Medinsky showed the list, which contains the names of 339 abducted Ukrainian children.
More than two months later, Moscow still has not responded, Betsa told Euronews.
“Despite three rounds of talks in Istanbul where Ukraine presented a modest starting point of 339 names to test Russian good faith, Russia’s delegation has met Ukrainian appeals with silence, evasion and scorn.”
Having received the list, the Kremlin representative accused Ukraine of “staging a show on the topic of lost children aimed at kind-hearted Europeans.” In his words, Kyiv is trying to “squeeze out a tear by raising this issue.”
During the Monday talks in the White House, the issue was at the top of the agenda for Zelenskyy and Trump, as well as for the European leaders.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, “As a mother and grandmother, every single child has to go back to its family.”
“This should be one of our main priorities also in these negotiations, to make sure that the children come back to Ukraine, to their families.”
In fact, Trump praised von der Leyen for her leadership on the issue of missing children, which he described as a “worldwide” problem.
In a post on Truth Social, the US president shared their discussions on this tragic aspect of Russia’s war against Ukraine, saying, “It is a subject at the top of all lists, and the World will work together to solve it, hopefully bringing them home to their families!”.
Recently, 40 countries issued a joint statement calling on Russia to immediately and unconditionally return forcibly deported Ukrainian children, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister said, adding, “President Trump’s comments reaffirm this clear and united message: the return of Ukrainian children without delay or conditions is non-negotiable.”
“The suffering of children is one of the most unbearable tragedies of this war. We highly value President Trump and our European partners’ longstanding support in locating and returning Ukraine’s children.”
“We will not stop until every child is back where they belong: with their families, in their homeland, safe and free.”
Euronews recently reported that Russia-installed occupation authorities in Ukraine’s Luhansk region created an online “catalogue” of Ukrainian children, offering them for coerced “adoption” through the education department.
The database includes 294 Ukrainian children, who are sorted and categorised so that the users can “filter” them by age, gender and physical traits, like eyes and hair colour.
Betsa says up to 1.6 million Ukrainian children still remain in the temporarily occupied territories at this time.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes because of his involvement in the abductions of children from Ukraine.
The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
The arrest warrant places Putin at risk of detention in any of the ICC’s 124 members if he steps onto their territory.