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Ukraine is scrambling to recover thousands of children taken by Russia, and Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska is crediting Melania Trump for helping spotlight the effort.
“The community that has been created by the first lady, Melania Trump, is very important,” Zelenska said in a special interview on “The Sunday Briefing.”
“I’m very grateful to her for getting involved in this,” she added later, her words translated from Ukrainian. “She deeply understands how important this subject is, and I am sure that her involvement is very helpful, because her advocacy attracts attention.”
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Zelenska said the effort to bring the children home depends on a growing coalition of countries working together to identify their whereabouts and pressure Russia to return them.
So far, about 2,000 children have been brought back to Ukraine, but she warned the current pace is far too slow.
“If we go as slow as this, it will take dozens of years to bring them all back,” Zelenska said.
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“It’s very important that as many countries as possible join us [in the effort to find them].”
Ukraine is reportedly still searching for roughly 20,000 children believed to have been “forcibly relocated” by Russia since the start of the war in 2022. The Trump administration boosted the effort last week with a fresh $25 million in funding.
Investigations have found that many of the children have been taken to a network of more than 200 facilities across Russia and occupied territories, where they are subjected to “re-education” programs, placed with Russian families and more.
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Some sites have also been linked to military-style training for some children, according to research from Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab.
Zelenska said efforts to locate the children are complicated by a lack of reliable information, accusing Russia of making it difficult to track their whereabouts.
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