US State Department denies deletion of Ukraine's abducted children database
Photo: Tammy Bruce, spokesperson for the US Department of State (x.com/StateDept)
US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce, during a briefing, stated that the reports from Western media suggesting that a US database documenting Ukrainian children abducted by Russia may have been deleted are false.
Several media outlets, including The Washington Post (WP), wrote that the administration of US President Donald Trump had shut down a US-funded initiative that documented Russian war crimes. According to reports, this also affected the database tracking the mass illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Prosecutors investigating criminal cases against Russia, including the International Criminal Court (ICC) case against dictator Vladimir Putin, allegedly lost access to all data.
"At that time, the researchers lost access to a trove of information, including satellite imagery and biometric data tracking the identities and locations of as many as 35,000 children from Ukraine," WP reported.*
"We have reason to believe that the data has been permanently deleted. If this is true, it will have devastating consequences," stated a letter from a group of Democratic US congressmen to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
State Department denies the allegations
According to Bruce, all rumors about the deletion of the database are false.
"So that is false. The data exists. It was not in the State Department’s control. It was the people running that framework, but we know who is running the data and the website, and we know fully that the data exists, and it’s not been deleted, and it’s not missing," she added.
Abduction of Ukrainian children
During Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, numerous cases of illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian territory were documented. Under the guise of "evacuation," Russian authorities transported children from temporarily occupied territories, changed their citizenship, and placed them in Russian families.
In 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for their involvement in the deportation of Ukrainian children.
