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.
Moscow denies wrongdoing, saying it moved children from occupied areas for their own safety and is willing to return them to their families under conditions it considers appropriate.
Small groups of children have been repatriated through intermediaries. Last year, the Trump administration cut funding to a humanitarian research lab at Yale University that had been collecting data to track the displaced children.
A separate report released by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab this week alleged that Russian state-controlled energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft played a direct role in the transfer and political indoctrination of Ukrainian children taken from occupied territories. The report concluded “with high confidence” that the companies and their subsidiaries facilitated the transportation and/or re-education of at least 2,158 children from occupied areas of Ukraine between 2022 and 2025.
According to the report, researchers identified six camps in Russia and Russian-occupied territories where Ukrainian children were taken, including facilities owned by Gazprom subsidiaries. Children from occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions were exposed to pro-Russian messaging and, in some cases, militarized activities described as “patriotic education.” The report also identified 44 entities linked to the effort, including subsidiaries and trade unions tied to Gazprom and Rosneft, and said 80% of them are not currently under US or European sanctions.