The Yale University research lab was tracking thousands of Ukrainian children forcibly deported to Russia since the invasion began.
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The White House says Russia agreed temporary ceasefire in which Kyiv and Moscow agree to stop attacking each other’s power plants and electric grids.
- Members of Congress said they feared the tracking data had been lost since the State Department cut funding to the Yale Medical School project.
- State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce rebutted that claim, saying, “we know fully that the data exists and it has not been deleted and it is not missing.”
WASHINGTON − The Trump administration cut off funding to a project tracking thousands of Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia, even as President Donald Trump promised President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a Wednesday call to help the abducted children return home.
The project, run by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, was tracking Russia’s “systematic, intentional, and widespread coerced adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine,” according to its latest report. Researchers with the project were told recently that its funding was “discontinued,” a Yale University spokesperson confirmed. A Monday news release from the lab asked for donations to keep the investigation running.
Amid the funding cancellation, fear spread among some lawmakers that the project’s data – crucial to keep track of the deported children – had been wiped.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court charged Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, a Kremlin official who became the public face of the deportation campaign, with war crimes. The pair are criminally responsibility for taking hundreds of children from Ukrainian orphanages and homes to be put up for adoption in Russia, according to ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan.
Data collected by the Yale project on more than 30,000 Ukrainian children held at “dozens of locations” in Russia may now be gone, according to a letter Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, and more than a dozen other members of Congress sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday.
“We have reason to believe that the data from the repository has been permanently deleted,” Landsman wrote. “If true, this would have devastating consequences.”
The data includes “satellite imagery and biometric data,” according to the letter. The project planned to share it with European and Ukrainian authorities to help bring the children home and prosecute Russian officials responsible.
Data on abducted kids ‘is not missing,’ State Dept says
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce confirmed on Wednesday that the project was defunded but said claims that the data was deleted are “untrue.”
“The data exists. It was not in the State Department’s control,” she said at a briefing. “It was the people running that framework, but we know who was running the data and the website and we know fully that the data exists and it has not been deleted and it is not missing.”
Maintaining the database is crucial for accountability and humanitarian purposes, experts say. Archived data offers proof of the their original transfer out of Ukraine, while new information helps authorities tracks children’s last known whereabouts, including adoptions that have taken place.
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“President Zelenskyy has made clear that the return of all Ukrainian children who had been removed from Ukrainian territory have to be a central component of any comprehensive and just peace arrangement,” said Beth Van Schaack, the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice in the U.S. State Department office in the Biden administration.
“Losing the data and failing to continue to collect such data makes that harder to achieve and could undermine the ability to achieve some sort of a comprehensive resolution of the conflict,” she said.
In an interview with USA TODAY, Landsman said he remains concerned, despite the State Department’s statement that the data was still accessible.
He said that database provided hope that the U.S. was working to get the children back. “And then to find out that that has been shut down, and that these people, including some Russian oligarchs, who had already done something so egregious and morally repugnant in stealing children are now aware that no one’s looking, no one’s looking anymore, they’re not going to do the right thing,” he said.
Forced adoptions in Russia
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, the Yale lab has tracked more than 8,400 Ukrainian children – the youngest four months old – who were “systematically relocated” to dozens of facilities in Russia and the territory it occupies.
In its December report, the lab said it identified 314 children who were forcibly put up for adoption by Russians or placed in Russian foster families. In at least one case, the Russian government reissued a child’s birth certificate with a false name and birthdate.
Within a year of Russia’s invasion, the lab had found as many as 6,000 Ukrainian children who were taken to 43 different Russian reeducation camps. Now, the number of forcibly deported Ukrainian children stands at more than 19,000, according to a Ukrainian government tracker, although some estimates put the number in the hundreds of thousands. Less than 1,250 have been returned.
The children’s systematic abduction began before the invasion and grew as Russia took over more territory. It has targeted vulnerable children, including disabled children, children from abusive homes or in foster care, and orphans. In some cases, Russian officials even worked to persuade Ukrainian parents to part with their children so that they would be safe from the war, Nathaniel Raymond, who leads the study, previously told USA TODAY.
Trump admin wipes out foreign aid projects
It comes as the Trump administration has lead a sweeping effort to wipe out more than 80% of U.S. foreign aid contracts.
Many were run through USAID, the foreign aid arm of the State Department targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency last month. This week, a federal judge said the agency’s shutdown, including placing all its employees on administrative leave, was likely unconstitutional.
Bruce said the State Department cut funding to initiatives that fell outside the “framework of what mattered to this administration on the issue of making America safe and secure or more prosperous. But also, it’s an issue about waste and abuse.”
She said stressed Trump’s commitment to the return of the children in his call with Zelenskyy, and said, “I think that that’s a pretty good clear indication that we can still work on issues that matter and make them happen without it being in a certain structure that has existed.”
Landsman told USA TODAY that “It was a huge mistake.”
“And I hope it was just a mistake and they’re going to do everything in their power to fix it. But the thing that matters most, is the result, is the kids getting home,” he said.
Talk about returning the children, including at the leader level, is good, he added. “But talk is talk, and Putin stole 30,000 children. This has to end in a way where Putin doesn’t keep starting these wars, and nobody takes children.”