Trump hand-delivered Melania's letter raising plight of Ukrainian children

According to the outlet, the US First Lady addressed the issue of children in Ukraine and Russia in her letter.

Officials did not want to disclose the full content of the letter, except that it mentioned the abduction of children as a result of the war in Ukraine. Reuters noted that the existence of the letter had not been reported before.

Deportation of Ukrainian children

After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities launched a mass campaign of forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. Russian forces took children from their families so they could later be illegally adopted by Russian citizens.

One example was Russian children’s ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova, who adopted a boy illegally taken from Mariupol.

The deportation of Ukrainian children was the reason the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Russian children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.

According to Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets, Russia has deported over 19,500 children from Ukraine since the start of the full-scale war. More than a thousand of them have been returned to Ukraine so far, and the process continues.

This spring, Ukraine’s parliament adopted a draft law establishing liability for the illegal transfer and use of children for military purposes by representatives of a foreign state.

Recently, the US Congress introduced a resolution condemning the abduction and forced displacement of Ukrainian children by Russia.

More details about how Russia steals and breaks Ukrainian children can be found in the RBC-Ukraine report.