{"id":1556,"date":"2025-03-28T13:01:19","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T14:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/?p=1556"},"modified":"2025-04-01T23:05:36","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T23:05:36","slug":"donald-trump-backtracks-on-axing-team-finding-children-stolen-by-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/28\/donald-trump-backtracks-on-axing-team-finding-children-stolen-by-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump backtracks on axing team finding children stolen by Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The jostle over federal funding threw a spanner into the effort finding the abducted youngsters, campaigners say (Picture: Reuters\/AP\/REX\/Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

US<\/a> President Donald Trump<\/a> has U-turned his decision to cut funding for a team to track down Ukrainian children stolen by Russia<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Nearly 20,000 children have been abducted by Vladimir Putin\u2019s forces since he launched his invasion in 2022<\/a>, according to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab has spent years rescuing hundreds of these kidnapped children. <\/p>\n

But the group\u2019s funding was gutted by Elon Musk\u2019s cost-cutting agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, it was revealed this month.<\/p>\n

Amid international outcry, the Trump administration<\/a> has reversed this decision, officials told The Washington Post<\/a> today.<\/p>\n

Funding will be restored for at least six weeks.<\/p>\n

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Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said any deal to end the war should include Russia\u2019s return of the kidnapped children (Picture: Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yale\u2019s initiative, called the Conflict Observatory<\/a>, sees experts use open-source information and commercial satellite imagery to find the children.<\/p>\n

Exactly how many children have been taken is unclear, but campaigners say Russia may have carried out the largest\u00a0state-sponsored kidnapping<\/a>\u00a0of children in modern history.<\/p>\n

Yale researchers have pinpointed\u00a06,000 children<\/a>\u00a0taken to Russia and\u00a0more than 2,400<\/a>\u00a0to Belarus. <\/p>\n

Many have not only been torn away from their loved ones<\/a>, but have been tortured, denied food and forced into militaristic education.<\/p>\n

At least 314 youngsters<\/a> have become trapped in Russia\u2019s adoption and foster system and made Russian citizens, a move that Ukraine says is erasing their Ukrainian identities and indoctrinating them with Moscow\u2019s agenda. <\/p>\n

A Russian parliamentarian claimed<\/a> last July \u2018700,000 children had found refuge\u2019 in Russia.<\/p>\n

This information is shared with Europol and the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is trying to bring war crime charges against Russian officials.<\/p>\n

In 2023, the court issued\u00a0arrest warrants<\/a>\u00a0for Putin of Russia and the Kremlin\u2019s children\u2019s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for deporting children from Ukraine.<\/p>\n

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Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has been tasked with cutting government spending costs (Picture: Reuters)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But the Yale researchers have struggled to work since January after Trump signed an executive order freezing all foreign aid. <\/p>\n

The news was criticised on both sides of the political aisle, with Democrats and Republicans in Congress and Christian groups urging Trump to spare the observatory. <\/p>\n

Greg Landsman, a Democratic Representative in Ohio, said in a letter to the White House: \u2018The termination of this contract never should have happened, but I\u2019m grateful to see State change its mind.<\/p>\n

\u2018This shows that bipartisan, bicameral pressure got the administration to change course, but this still isn\u2019t good enough.\u2019<\/p>\n

With funding now resorted, for now at least, Yale researchers will continue sending their data to EU police officials, the State Department said.<\/p>\n

What will happen once the provisional funding ends is unknown. <\/p>\n

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk<\/a>.<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

For more stories like this, <\/strong>check our news page<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The jostle over federal funding threw a spanner into the effort finding the abducted youngsters, campaigners say (Picture: Reuters\/AP\/REX\/Getty 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\u2019s forces since he launched his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1556"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1561,"href":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions\/1561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/softnary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}