Several U.S. lawmakers warned on Wednesday that the repatriation of the roughly 20,000 Ukrainian children whom Russian troops have forcibly abducted should be a nonnegotiable part of discussions to end the war.
Russia’s military has forcibly taken an unspecified number of Ukrainian children, deported them to various parts of Russia or Russian-occupied Ukraine, and then inundated them with anti-Ukrainian propaganda with the intent of destroying an entire generation of Ukrainians.
The Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs held a hearing featuring various U.S. and Ukrainian officials on Wednesday to highlight the plight of these children and the barbarity of the Russian forces.
“There’ll be sacrifices made” in any agreement to end the war, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said during his opening remarks, “but one of the sacrifices we’re not going to make is to give Russia 19,000 Ukrainian children. That’s not a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I doubt if anybody up here is willing to make a sacrifice. This is not about land. This is about families. It’s about the very fabric of society.”
He added, “How would you feel if it were one of your children? What would you want the world to do? I’d want the world to get my kid back. Is that asking too much?”
The ranking member on the subcommittee, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), agreed that any peace deal to end the war that doesn’t include consequences for Russia’s kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children would be “unacceptable” and argued that doing so would “set a very dangerous precedent for the world.”
Schatz said the State Department declined to send a representative to testify at the hearing, while Graham said they also sent an invitation to the Russian ambassador, but he, too, didn’t show up.
In October, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations unanimously voted to advance legislation, backed by Graham and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), that would designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism if the abducted children are not returned.
“It’s more than a war crime. It is literally genocide. It is genocide because the ultimate goal of abducting these children is to erase Ukrainian identity. It is part of a strategic effort to erase the nation of Ukraine from existence, and Putin tried it by conquering territory,” Blumenthal, who testified before his Senate colleagues, said during the hearing.
Blumenthal referenced specific Ukrainian children he’s spoken with whose parents were killed in the war and were then brought against their will to Russia.
“I think the people of the United States should know about these atrocities, war crimes, genocide as part of a systematic, deliberate effort to indoctrinate the children of Ukraine with pro-Russian ideologies and to delegitimize and deny their national identity,” he said.
One of the leading organizations dedicated to tracking the kidnapped children is the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, though the Trump administration has cut the group’s funding, and they are now operating on private donations. The lab’s executive director, Nathaniel Raymond, was among the second group of witnesses to testify before the committee.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in March 2023 for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children’s rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, whom they said shared responsibility for these child deportations.
The Trump administration is continuing to push for a negotiated settlement to end the war, which is approaching the four-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Despite the current administration’s willingness to make overtures to Moscow for such a proposal, there has been little success in creating a proposal that both sides could accept.
The most recent round of negotiations included a proposal created in part by Steve Witkoff, the former real estate mogul turned special envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and former foreign policy adviser, that was widely seen as more favorable to Russia, raising concerns domestically and abroad among Ukraine’s allies.
After Witkoff and Kushner’s recent meeting in Moscow with Putin, Yury Ushakov, a foreign policy adviser to the Russian president, said, “A compromise solution hasn’t been found yet.”
Moscow, in negotiations, continues to push for significant concessions on the part of the Ukrainians, including constraints on the size of Ukraine’s military, requiring Ukraine to give up additional territory that Russian forces have not conquered militarily, and a demand that Ukraine forgo its ambition to be brought into the NATO alliance.
“It’s hard to tell about confidence level on it because ultimately the decisions have to be made, in the case of Russia, by Putin alone, not his advisers. Putin — only Putin can end this war on the Russian side,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Fox News on Tuesday night. “I think we’ve made some progress. We’ve gotten closer, but we’re still not there. We’re still not close enough. But that could change.”
CONGRESS TO HEAR PLIGHT OF THOUSANDS OF ABDUCTED UKRAINIAN CHILDREN TAKEN TO RUSSIA
Ukrainian officials have largely denounced Russia’s maximalist demands, but President Volodymyr Zelensky is reeling from a corruption scandal that led to the resignation of the head of the presidential office, Andriy Yermak.
The U.S. conversations with Ukrainian and Russian delegations will continue, but it’s unclear if the United States, despite the prospect of doing business with America long term, will be able to change Putin’s calculus that he can outlast Ukraine and Western support for the beleaguered country.
