US allocates $25 million to track, return Ukrainian children abducted by Russia

War US allocates $25 million to track, return Ukrainian children abducted by Russia March 26, 2026 9:45 pm • 2 min read Prefer on Google by Dmytro Basmat The United States has allocated $25 million to identify, return, and rehabilitate Ukrainian children forcibly abducted by Russia, the State Department announced on March 26. Since the start of Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s national " Children of War " database has documented 20,000 Ukrainian children that have been abducted from Russian-occupied territories and taken to Russia or Russian-controlled areas. Ukrainian officials estimate the real figure of abducted children could be as many as 200,000–300,000. The newly announced grant , which was publicly posted on the U.S. government grants' website, will be allocated to U.S. non-profit organizations in support of the Ukrainian government's efforts to return the Russia-abducted children, the grant descriptions reads. In a separate news release, the State Department said that the funding, supported by the U.S. Congress, will "assist reliable partners" in the identification and tracking of the children, while subsequently providing support to the "Ukrainian government and trusted local partners" to facilitate their return to Ukrainian-held soil. Become a member – go ad‑free Despite U.S. President Donald Trump being thus far unable to broker a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv, U.S. First Lady Melania Trump has nonetheless made the issue of abducted Ukrainian children a central focus of her humanitarian agenda — helping to facilitate the return of a few dozen children to their Ukrainian parents. While Kyiv has also made progress on returning some of the children, thus far fewer than 2,000 of the abducted Ukrainian children have been returned to their Ukrainian families. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova ...