US First Lady Melania Trump has reportedly penned a letter to Russian leader Vladimir Putin urging him to address Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children.
According to two US officials cited by Reuters, US President Donald Trump personally handed the letter to Putin during talks in Alaska on Friday, Aug. 15.
The contents of the document have not been disclosed, except that it referred to the forced transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied territories.
Melania Trump, a native of Slovenia, was not present in Alaska during Trump’s meeting with Putin, Reuters noted.
Prior to Friday’s Trump-Putin talks, which Trump later described as “highly productive,” a bipartisan group of senior US lawmakers introduced a resolution urging the return of all abducted Ukrainian children before any peace deal is finalized.
As of August 2025, over 1.6 million Ukrainian children remain under Moscow’s control – either in occupied territories or deported to Russia. They face forced Russification, militarization and ideological indoctrination – actions some label as genocide, which have led the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for Putin.
Part of the indoctrination process involve military-oriented youth summer camps, where Ukrainian youth could be seen partaking in war game simulations and swearing allegiance to Moscow.
Previously, Moscow claimed that it was “protecting vulnerable children from the war zone.”
With tactics that include forcibly taking children from orphanages, killing parents, splitting up families during filtration processes, creating unbearable living conditions in occupied areas, and brazenly kidnapping children from their homes and schools, it’s more than a tragedy; it’s a deliberate attack on Ukraine’s future, said Ukraine’s “Bring Kids Back UA” initiative on its website.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that Russia has caused suffering to millions of Ukrainian children and violated their rights since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Moscow’s indiscriminate attack on civilian targets in Ukriane have also led to thousands of children deaths.
In a late July Russian missile and drone strike on Kyiv, at least 31 civilians were killed, including five children, while 159 others were wounded, among them 16 children.