U.S. defunds search for Ukraine’s children of war

In the Conflict Observatory at the Yale Humanitarian Research Laboratory, some staffers don’t know their coworkers’ real name—one of several security precautions to prevent Russia from tracking them. They spend their days combing through data, finding ways into Russian databases, and scrutinizing color matches to wallpapers posted on social media. They are working to identify and track as many as 35,000 Ukrainian children who they believe were separated from their families since the war started. The Yale lab found that most of those children are being put through summer reeducation camps or offered for adoption online.

“This is the single largest kidnapping in world history since World War II,” Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale Humanitarian Research Laboratory, told me. The Conflict Observatory is housed within the lab. “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the child rights commissioner, have engaged in industrialized child abduction and re-education and, in some cases, military training.”

In December, the Conflict Observatory identified three interconnected databases used by Russia and its Ministry of Education.

“They were putting children from Ukraine up for adoption and fostering through these databases, basically eBay for orphans,” Raymond told me.

The Conflict Observatory operates on government grants so that it can share its data with federal entities and Europol, the top law enforcement agency in Europe. That work was jeopardized earlier this year when the State Department canceled the observatory’s $8 million contract. It temporarily reinstated the contract for a six-week period to transfer the data to Europol. Now, lawmakers are petitioning Secretary of State Marco Rubio to restore funding. In case he does not, Yale has launched a fundraiser with the support of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“Russia has abducted thousands of Ukrainian children, plunging families into every parent's worst nightmare,” Clinton wrote in an X post, linking to a Yale giving website. “Now, Trump cuts threaten to close a Yale center that helps bring these children home.”

Since 2022, tens of thousands of children have gone missing, in some cases from war zones. In others, they were deported to Russia. Media often refer to them as “missing children,” though they aren’t lost in a traditional sense. Most of them were found by Russian authorities but have not been reunited with their families. Others were taken from their families in Russian-occupied territory as far back as 2014 to participate in so-called summer camps. These camps pressured children to adopt Russian identities.

“We talk about the kids as if they’re a monolith, as if they’re all just one big basket of kids. They’re not,” Raymond said. He said the lab has identified four categories of missing children. “Camp kids” were meant to be returned to their families but weren’t after 2022. Institutional children were wards of the Ukrainian state but lived in the Donbas and Luhansk regions that Russia occupied. Many in this group have developmental disabilities and special needs. Filtration children were taken directly from their families, and battlefield children are likely the only group of genuine orphans who were found in a battlezone.

“Often you’ll hear Russia and those who are apologists for Russia say these are emergency medical evacuations,” Raymond said. “Well, that has lasted three years for children from 8 months of age to 17. … Right now, they are hostages and they’re being used for leverage by Putin.”

The Geneva Conventions outline a process for caring for children in such situations, but Russia has not complied with it. When a government at war finds a child without parents or guardians, it is supposed to notify the Red Cross, the United Nations, and the opposing government. Then it is supposed to work with the Red Cross to remove the child to a neutral third country. The International Federation of the Red Cross has not reported any contact, but the head of the Belarus Red Cross announced in 2023 that his organization partnered with the Russian Red Cross to relocate Ukrainian children. Russia has also blocked the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from Ukrainian-occupied territory.

Yale’s trackers found pictures of Ukrainian children posted to Russian online forums. Researchers also noted that Russia passed an amendment to its civil code to create a guardianship system to allow Russian adults to renounce a child’s Ukrainian citizenship. The project tracked a plane in Putin’s own presidential fleet carrying Ukrainian children into Russian territory. Russia has reclassified many children in the databases as orphans ready for adoption, even though their parents are living in Ukraine. At least 314 children have been coerced into foster and adoption programs, and thousands have spread throughout Russia and Belarus, according to the lab. A December report by the UN human rights commissioner’s office found that at least 200 children were forcibly removed from occupied territory to Russia. Russia had returned only 11 children as of April of this year.

“Russia is very aware of what we are trying to do,” Raymond said. “The point is, we’re playing a game of cat and mouse with Russia’s security services. In particular, their cyber capabilities. … And that does not come cheap.”

Supported by the lab’s research, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023, accusing him of unlawfully deporting children. Grigory Karasin, head of the international committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, estimated that same year that Russia had recovered up to 700,000 children from conflict zones. Russian officials characterize it as rescuing the children. But the Yale lab uncovered that the Kremlin is changing names and birth dates, making it difficult to identify a genuine number.

The Yale lab received $6 million in funding from the Biden administration. Amid a purge of foreign aid disbursement and federal contracts in February and March, the Trump administration suspended the lab’s contract. After a few days, Rubio reinstated it and said that none of the data collected had been lost, but the contract would not be renewed after it ran out. The State Department confirmed to WORLD that it only renewed funding for the Humanitarian Research Laboratory on a temporary basis to transfer its data, which it characterized as standard closeout procedure. Earlier this week, the lab announced it will close its doors by July 1.

On Wednesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, and members of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus sent a letter to Rubio demanding to renew funding for the lab. The letter argues that the data sent to Europol will soon be out of date, and the lab must continue its work until the war is over and the children returned to their families. A May letter to a House Appropriations subcommittee also requested $8 million in appropriations for the lab for the upcoming fiscal year.

“No explanation has been given to us as to why funding for the Conflict Observatory has been terminated,” Doggett wrote in this week’s letter. “We are part of a bipartisan effort to seek the relatively modest amount of appropriations necessary to continue this invaluable work during the next fiscal year.”

Only one Republican, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, signed the letter.

In May, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., introduced a resolution calling for the return of the children before any Russia-Ukraine peace deal is signed. Raymond says this is a crucial distinction because of how the Geneva Convention works. It stipulates that children may not be used as hostages; therefore, negotiations should not hinge on their return. That should happen regardless.

“It’s not just about the kids in this war,” Raymond said. “It’s about the kids in all the wars of the future to prevent a green light to perpetrators of abduction crimes against children from seeing the United States trade kids with Russia and Ukraine as if they’re poker chips in a dangerous card game. If that happens, it rips a hole in the integrity of the Geneva Convention for generations to come.”

Matthew Soerens, the vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief, helped to compile a group of religious leaders to sign a similar letter to Trump and Rubio in April. He said the issue of the missing Ukrainian children has not received a high level of attention. 

“We need to make sure that whatever peace agreement, which of course we hope and pray there will be a peace agreement, but that needs to include children being returned to their families,” Soerens told WORLD. “We hope that the Trump administration and Congress will use their influence, especially on the well-being of those who are vulnerable, like kids.”

World Journalism Institute graduate Sam Boger contributed to this reporting.