WASHINGTON DC – A bipartisan group of leading US lawmakers on Monday introduced a congressional resolution calling for the return of all abducted Ukrainian children before finalizing any peace agreement between the war-torn country Ukraine and its invader, Russia, Kyiv Post’s Washington correspondent reports.
The issue has been at the center of an international war crimes arrest warrants against Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and key Russian officials, as Ukraine has officially identified 19,546 children, calling their abductions war crimes that meet the UN definition of genocide.
The resolution, which strongly condemns Russia’s abduction, forcible transfer, and facilitation of the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children, is led by Republican Congressmember Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair emeritus of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Democrat Gregory Meeks (D-NY), ranking member of the Committee.
The Senate version of the resolution had been introduced last month by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
“Putin is a war criminal and, under his watch, the Russian military has cruelly abducted and illegally deported tens of thousands of Ukrainian children from their homeland,” Meeks said in a statement Monday afternoon.
“These atrocities are not isolated incidents; they are the direct result of Putin’s war of choice,” he noted adding that the US “has a responsibility to condemn these unconscionable acts by Russia and to demand the immediate return of each and every one of the children Russia has taken.”
McCaul recalled that since the beginning of Putin’s war of aggression, Russia has abducted at least 19,500 Ukrainian children from their homeland – with some estimates putting the true number as high as 200,000.
“These children have been stripped of their national identity, adopted into Russian families, or indoctrinated as soldiers for the Kremlin,” he noted.
“As a father, I can’t imagine the pain their families have experienced. Russia’s mass-scale child abduction is nothing short of evil; the US must demonstrate moral leadership by demanding every child be returned to his or her family in Ukraine before true peace can be achieved,” McCaul said in a statement.
As of April 16, Ukraine and its partners have only managed to return 1,274 abducted children.
The US State Department’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report found Russia recruits or uses child soldiers, has a state-sponsored policy or pattern of human trafficking and is among the worst hubs for human trafficking in the world.