First lady Melania Trump has pledged to get Ukrainian children returned from Russian captivity, but her mission is fraught with high-stakes risks.
President Donald Trump's wife last week hailed the return of eight Ukrainian children to their families, and while advocates celebrated the reunions, they also raised concerns about the first lady's passive-voice characterization of how they ended up in Russia, reported CNN.
“Everyone is moving very carefully, but everyone is clear on the point that the first lady’s office needs to hear: Thank you — but it is 35,000 kids, not seven or eight,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab.
The research lab operates the Ukraine Conflict Observatory through private donations after the Trump administration cut its funding, and Raymond worried that Melania Trump was understating the gravity of the situation.
“It is kids who were taken as a war crime and kids who are being militarized and were abducted by a state — not lost in the war," Raymond said. "Language matters."
The Yale lab reported last month that children had been taken to at least 210 locations to be re-educated in alignment with Russian values and narratives, and in some cases trained for combat against Ukraine, and some advocates expressed concern that Putin might try to manipulate the first lady through her direct involvement.
“Every returned child is wonderful for that family and that child, so that is good," said Bill Taylor, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. "But there are more than 19,000 of these, and I do think that Putin is cynically using this in an attempt to make the Trumps more sympathetic to him."
"I think the first lady is genuinely interested in getting the Ukrainian children home," Taylor added. "But the fact is that Putin is not. He could return all of these kids and end the war tomorrow if he wanted."
The president himself blurred the numbers after a two-hour phone call with Putin, saying the number of children could be anywhere between 20,000 and 300, and a Republican congressional aide revealed some skepticism around Melania Trump’s direct line with Putin, but so far no one on Capitol Hill wants to challenge the White House on the issue.
“If there needs to be conversations with the White House on this, there will be, but I have no indication that Melania believes what Putin says,” the aide said.
