UKRAINE: New $25M US Fund to help return Ukrainian children abducted to Russia
Ukraine’s first lady hailed a new US program to help identify, return, and rehabilitate Ukrainian childrenforcefully taken to Russia
Kyiv Post & Reuters (27.03.2026) – Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska on Thursday welcomed a new $25 million US fund aimed at helping return Ukrainian children forcibly relocated to Russia, AFP reported. “All Ukrainian children must return,” Zelenska wrote on X after meeting in Washington with senior US State Department officials Riley Barnes and Jeremy Lewin, who oversee human rights and humanitarian aid issues.
The United States announced the creation of the fund earlier in the day, saying it would support “the identification, return, and rehabilitation of Ukrainian children and youth who have been forcibly transferred or otherwise held away from their families and communities.”
According to the US statement, the funding will back two main types of programs: efforts to identify and track displaced children, and support for their reintegration after returning home.
Kyiv says that nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken to Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The issue remains one of the most sensitive in Ukraine and has featured prominently in discussions surrounding any potential peace negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.
A recent UN international commission of inquiry accused Russia of committing “crimes against humanity” through the forced deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children and by obstructing their return.
US provides $25 million for return of Ukrainian children deported to Russian-controlled territories
The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it is providing $25 million in new assistance to support the identification, return, and rehabilitation of Ukrainian children.
The funding will support programs that “identify and track children that have been forcibly transferred away from their home” and will support the Ukrainian government and local partners to care for returning children, the department said.
Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, who is visiting the U.S., has been advocating for the release of Ukrainian children and met State Department officials during her trip. She said she was grateful to the U.S. administration and Congress for “making this a priority”.
“Behind every number is a child, a family, a life waiting to be restored. Every Ukrainian child must come home,” she wrote in a post on X on Thursday.
The “Bring Kids Back UA” initiative, a programme under President Volodymyr Zelenskiy aimed at bringing to safe areas children who had been deported to Russia or confined to Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, said on Thursday that over 2,000 children had been returned.
Ukraine is currently processing 20,570 cases of deported and forcibly transferred children, it said.
A U.N. investigation found earlier this month that Russia’s deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022 amounted to crimes against humanity.
Russia has repeatedly denied abducting Ukrainian children, saying it acted to keep them safe from the fighting.
Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Anna Pruchnicka, writing by Christian Martinez; Editing by Caitlin Webber, Aidan Lewis
Russia’s deportations of Ukrainian children amount to crimes against humanity, UN inquiry finds (Emma Farge)
A U.N. investigation found on Tuesday that Russia’s deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022 amounted to crimes against humanity.
Ukraine says close to 20,000 children have been illegally sent to Russia and Belarus where they are sometimes subject to military training and forced to fight against their own troops.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and five other Russians over illegal deportation of children. Moscow denies it is taking children against their will, saying it has been evacuating people voluntarily to remove them from a war zone.
“In this report, the Commission concluded that crimes against humanity and war crimes by Russian authorities have targeted children, who are among the most vulnerable victims,” said the report.
“These crimes have irreversible consequences on their lives and their future.”
The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine studied the cases of 1,205 children from five regions in Ukraine and said that 80% of them have yet to return.
Its work is based on analysis of thousands of documents and submissions from rights groups as well as over 200 interviews, including with families of the missing and some children who made it home.
“The deportations and transfers have originated from various locations across a wide geographic area in Russian-occupied areas in Ukraine, following a well-established pattern of conduct, indicating that these acts have been widespread and systematic,” added the report, to be presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday.
It also said that Russian authorities at the highest level of government have helped coordinate the actions.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha welcomed the report and called on states to increase pressure on Russia to secure the return of deported children.
A spokesperson for Russia’s diplomatic mission in Geneva did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S.-funded research last year showed Russia expanded its forced re-education programmes of deported children. U.S. first lady Melania Trump has advocated for their release and has been in touch with Putin’s team as part of her work.
Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva and Yuliia Dysa in Kyiv; editing by Miranda Murray and Thomas Seythal
Emma Farge reports on the U.N. beat and Swiss news from Geneva since 2019. She has produced a string of exclusives on diplomacy, the environment and global trade and covered Switzerland’s first war crimes trial. Her Reuters career started in 2009 covering oil swaps from London and she has since written about the West African Ebola outbreak, embedded with U.N. troops in north Mali and was the first reporter to enter deposed Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh’s estate. She co-authored a winning story for the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize on Russia’s diplomatic isolation in 2022 and was also part of a team of journalists nominated in 2012 as Pulitzer finalists in the international reporting category for coverage of the Libyan revolution. She holds a BA from Oxford University (First) and an MSc from the LSE in International Relations. She is currently on the board of the press association for UN correspondents in Geneva (ACANU).
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