US President Donald Trump has U-turned his decision to cut funding for a team to track down Ukrainian children stolen by Russia.
Nearly 20,000 children have been abducted by Vladimir Putin’s forces since he launched his invasion in 2022, according to Ukraine.
The Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab has helped bring home hundreds of these ‘unlawfully deported’ children.
But the group’s funding was gutted by Elon Musk’s cost-cutting agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, it was revealed this month.
Amid international outcry, the Trump administration has reversed this decision, officials told The Washington Post today.
Yale’s initiative, called the Conflict Observatory, sees experts use open-source information and commercial satellite imagery to find the children.
Exactly how many children have been taken is unclear. Yale researchers have pinpointed 6,000 children taken to Russia and more than 2,400 to Belarus.
At least 314 youngsters have become trapped in Russia’s adoption and foster system. A Russian parliamentarian claimed last July ‘700,000 children had found refuge’ in Russia.
This information is shared with Europol and the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is trying to bring war crime charges against Russian officials.
In2023, the court issued arrest warrants for Putin of Russia and the Kremlin’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for deporting children from Ukraine.
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