The US May Have Destroyed Evidence Of Abduction Of 30,000 Children From Ukraine By Russia
9- 19.03.2025, 13:47
- 8,928
Important data may have simply been deleted.
The Trump administration has halted a program to track the mass deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia, which may have resulted in the deletion of evidence of Russian war crimes that cost $26 million to study, Reuters reports.
The Trump administration has ended a government-funded initiative led by the Yale Humanities Research Lab (Yale HRL) that tracked the mass deportation of children from Ukraine, amid cuts to a wide range of US government programs and much of its foreign aid, according to Democratic lawmakers.
As a result, Democrats have prepared a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that they are expected to send on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
It states that the State Department and the Yale Center “stored evidence of the abduction of children from Ukraine whom they identified to share with Europol and the Ukrainian government to ensure their return.”
The letter also added that due to the Trump administration's decision, researchers lost access to a huge amount of information, including satellite imagery and other data, on about 30,000 children taken from Ukraine.
“We have reason to believe that the data in the repository has been permanently deleted. If true, this would have devastating consequences,” the Democratic lawmakers said in the letter.
The Washington Post first reported on the program's termination. It became known on the same day that Trump had a phone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. During this conversation, Russia did not agree to a 30-day cessation of hostilities.
A person familiar with the tracking program said the State Department's termination of its contract with Yale HRL resulted in the deletion of $26 million worth of war crimes evidence.
“They took $26 million of American taxpayer money that was used for war crimes data and threw it in a shredder, including all the children's files... If you wanted to protect President Putin from prosecution, you would destroy this thing. And they did. This is the final version, admissible in court, with all the metadata,” the person said.
Democratic lawmakers are calling on President Donald Trump's administration to restore a program that helps track thousands of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia.
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