Melania Trump helped bring back 26 Ukrainian children taken by Russia, Ukraine’s ombudsman says

U.S. First Lady Melania Trump has helped to facilitate the return of 26 Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said on April 30.

Lubinets told reporters at the Civil Society and Expert Day event in Kyiv that the first lady has become a key partner in the process of negotiating with Russia to bring Ukrainian children back from Russia and the occupied territories.

"She helps us a lot... It is clear that the involvement of the first lady of the United States makes it (negotiating with Russia) easier for me in some sense," Lubinets said.

Lubinets said Russia "can't avoid" responding to Ukrainian requests when they are relayed through the U.S. He added that Ukraine holds weekly talks about the issue with the first lady.

The Civil Society and Expert Day was organized by the Bring Kids Back UA initiative ahead of a ministerial-level meeting of the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children, which will take place in Brussels on May 11.

The first lady wrote to Russian President Vladimir Putin in August 2025, appealing to him about the plight of abducted Ukrainian children, a message that U.S. President Donald Trump later conveyed during his meeting with the Russian leader in Alaska.

In the months since, the White House has said on four previous occasions that Ukrainian children had been safely brought back from Russia, attributing the efforts to the first lady and an unnamed representative.

The latest return of children happened on April 2, when the White House said in a statement that the first lady helped facilitate the return of seven more Ukrainian children taken by Russia.

The U.S. State Department announced in late March that it had allocated $25 million to help Ukraine identify, bring back, and rehabilitate children who were taken by Russia.

Ukraine has successfully identified 20,570 children who have been taken by Russia since the start of the full-scale war, but Ukrainian officials estimate the real figure of abducted children could be far higher.

Lubinets puts the number at up to 150,000, while Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Daria Herasymchuk has given a range of 200,000-300,000.

The Bring Kids Back UA initiative has been tracing and returning Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied territories and Russia since 2023. More than 2,100 Ukrainian children abducted by Russia had been brought back to Ukraine by the initiative as of April 22.

The International Criminal Court issued international arrest warrants in March 2023 for both Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia's commissioner for children's rights, regarding the mass abduction of Ukrainian children.

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