Bipartisan House Members Urge Secretary Rubio to Save Program Tracking Kidnapped Ukrainian Children

This follows a bipartisan appropriations request to reunite children with their families while holding war criminals accountable.

Contact: Alexis.Torres@mail.house.gov

Washington, D.C.-Today, U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), an active member of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, led a bipartisan group of colleagues in urging State Secretary Marco Rubio to maintain funding for the Conflict Observatory at Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab. Months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Conflict Observatory began collecting, analyzing, and preserving information related to Russian war crimes, including Putin's abduction and concealment of Ukrainian children within Russia's adoption system.

"Without your immediate action, the Conflict Observatory will be forced to shutter by July 1st, and its ongoing research identifying more kidnapped Ukrainian children will end. Although the Conflict Observatory's database of children has been transferred to Europol, it will quickly become out-of-date in a matter of weeks-hindering efforts to ensure every child is returned to family. No explanation has been given to us as to why funding for the Conflict Observatory has been terminated. We are part of a bipartisan effort to seek the relatively modest amount of appropriations necessary to continue this invaluable work during the next fiscal year. We ask that you utilize your authority to keep the Conflict Observatory open until our appropriation request can become law," wrote the lawmakers.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration illegally terminated Congressionally authorized funding for the Conflict Observatory before reinstating a six-week funding allotment to transfer all research and data to Ukrainian organizations and Europol, the European Union's agency for law enforcement cooperation. The lawmakers note that Europol and other organizations do not have the specific expertise and resources needed to successfully navigate open-source intelligence and Russian websites to locate missing children.

"Research must continue unabated to maintain the rigorous process of identifying every Ukrainian child abducted by Russia. The Conflict Observatory has verified that at least 19,500 children have been forcibly deported from occupied areas of Ukraine, funneled into reeducation camps or adopted by Russian families, and their identities erased. The actual number of children remaining in Russia is presumably significantly higher, with a Russian official stating in July 2023 that Russia had brought 700,000 children from conflict zones in Ukraine to Russia. Many kidnapped Ukrainian children have not yet been identified due to the Kremlin changing their names, place of birth, and date of birth," the lawmakers continued.

To ensure the United States upholds its core democratic values, Rep. Doggett and more than 50 colleagues submitted a bipartisan request last month to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on National Security, Department of State and Related Programs calling for no less than $8 million to be included in its Fiscal Year 2026 government funding bill to continue tracking kidnapped Ukrainian children. With President Trump cruelly terminating funding for critical foreign and domestic programs, the forced closure of the Conflict Observatory is yet another abhorrent example of this administration dismantling our nation's status as a global superpower.

Today's full letter can be read here. Rep. Doggett's bipartisan appropriations request can be found here.