Musk cancels funding for the team rescuing Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia

Trump’s federal cost-cutting - led by Elon Musk’s Doge – has now hit the unit helping rescue Ukrainian children taken by Russia

The world-leading unit helping to rescue Ukrainian children stolen by Russia has been axed amid Elon Musk’s slashing of US government spending, The i Paper can reveal.

Thousands of children have been removed from Ukraine and taken to Russia during the conflict, in a campaign of “unlawful deportation”.

The US government has been funding a specialist team based at Yale University, who have used open source technology to trace the lost children and help repatriate them.

But this team, which has already helped to locate hundreds of children, has now had its funding paused, amid tech tycoon Musk’s chainsaw slashing of the federal budget via the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge).

Donald Trump ally Peter Marocco has been leading on cuts to US foreign aid and development programmes, reportedly visiting offices alongside members of Doge. While Musk has not personally been overseeing individual funding freezes he has been setting the strategy and tone for deep government spending cuts in Washington.

There have been more than 19,500 reports of “unlawful deportation and forced transfer of children”, with campaigners claiming Russia is taking the children to erase Ukrainian culture and indoctrinate the younger generation into a pro-Russia mindset. Mykola Kuleba, founder of the charity Save Ukraine, previously said: “Russia is stealing our future.”

Around 1,240 children have so far been repatriated, according to Bring Kids Back UA, an initiative launched by Volodymyr Zelensky to rescue all children from deportation and occupation.

Three Ukrainian children who were rescued from Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine. The children were aged between three and 17 (Photo: Ombudsman’s office of Ukraine)

Fate of the stolen children now

When the search team gathers evidence, it passes the lead to Ukrainian authorities to attempt to bring back the children. The i Paper has confirmed that Yale Humanitarian Research Lab’s data has been used to reunite some families.

The decision to cut funding could now harm Ukraine’s capabilities to reunite more children with their families.

A report from the Yale team, published in December, said: “Russia’s program [sic] of coerced adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine has been intentionally and directly authorized [sic] by Putin and senior officials of the Russian Federation.”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has accused Vladimir Putin and Russian children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, of the deportation of children, which is a war crime. The Kremlin denies wrongdoing, claiming the adoptions by Russians are to help “abandoned” children.

Cutting the Yale unit’s work on Ukraine will raise further concerns over the Trump administration’s stance towards Russia. It will also serve as a blow to delicate Washington-Kyiv relations. After Trump’s fractious in-person meeting with Zelensky, the US pulled back from Ukraine and stopped all intelligence sharing. However, these tensions have eased amid ceasefire talks, with intelligence collaboration restored.

Sir Keir Starmer was asked this week if he would only commit to deploying British peacekeeping troops if the ceasefire deal included the return of the Ukraine’s children and Putin’s prosecution.

“It is an absolutely terrible case of abduction and kidnapping and when we say a lasting, just settlement or peace in Ukraine, it must of course involve dealing with this issue,” he told the Commons.

In November, the UK sanctioned 10 people who are connected to the Russian state’s deportation of Ukrainian children.

Who could step in

The UK Government may now be asked to step in to make up Yale’s funding shortfall, it is understood.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said the Government is “working to assess the implications of the US funding pause across development programmes”.

The former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who recently returned from Ukraine, said he hoped the funding pause was “an unintended consequence of the arbitrary cuts and freezes implemented by Doge”.

“I call on the US authorities to reinstate this money and if this is not the case, I urge the UK Government to work with Nato partners to find this replacement money.”

Ukrainian children sit next to Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, before their departure to Ukraine (Photo: Alexander Nemenov/AFP)

Yale’s researchers use open source information, including satellite imagery, social media and Russian publications, to identify, locate and track the whereabouts of Ukrainian children taken to Russia.

The evidence is then passed on to the Ukrainian authorities, including Bring Kids Back UA, to help find children and repatriate them.

In one of the lab’s last reports before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, it gathered evidence on 314 children from Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in eastern Ukraine. One child was from the occupied city of Mariupol. All of the children were aged two to 17.

Some are pictured on a Russian adoption and fostering website, while others are living with Russian families.

 

Ukrainian children were found on Russian child placement websites. This image was taken from the Yale Lab’s report and is an example of a typical image on these databases. It is not confirmed to be a Ukrainian child (Photo: Yale Humanitarian Research Lab/Conflict Observatory)

Yale becomes Doge’s victim

The lab is part of the Conflict Observatory programme, which was set up with funding from the US State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilisation Operations to investigate and publish evidence of Russia-perpetrated war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine. Other organisations also previously fed into the initiative.

Musk’s controversial Doge agency, created by Trump, has been tasked with cutting US government jobs and other spending. However it has also been accused of being heavy-handed and damaging the functionality of the government.

The i Paper understands Yale’s work has been on pause since late January, with researchers being shut out from their work and files.

The lab also shares its evidence with Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union, and the ICC, as part of their efforts to prosecute Russian individuals and agencies.

The abrupt closure meant efforts to transfer its latest evidence to Europol was not completed. It is also understood that the formal evidence-sharing agreement with the ICC ended.

The website for the Conflict Observatory appears to have been taken down.

Yale’s researchers found at least two groups of children were transported on aircraft managed by the Presidential Property Management Department in 2022, meaning ‘Putin’s own administration provided the resources to transport children from Ukraine prior to placing them with citizens of Russia’ (Photo: Maxar/Yale Humanitarian Lab/Conflict Observatory report)

Labour MP Johanna Baxter, who recently met with the Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, said: “The kidnapping of 19,546 Ukrainian children is not just a war crime – it is an act of pure evil beyond moral comprehension.

“Whether by accident or design, the slashing of US funding for the vital work to reunite these children with their families will have catastrophic consequences and risks enabling Putin’s war crimes. There will be no lasting peace without the safe return of these stolen children.”

Mike Martin, the Liberal Democrat MP who sits on the Defence Committee and Joint Committee on National Security Strategy, said: “The problem with the approach that Doge has taken is that they have just switched everything off and they don’t really have a clue what is actually worthwhile or not worthwhile – it’s a blanket approach.

“And now we’re seeing all sorts of problems coming out of it”.

In 2022, The i Paper revealed that Russia had built a tented camp for Ukrainians on the country’s south-east coast, amid claims of abductions. Satellite images showed up to 30 blue and white tents had been erected in a camp in the coastal village of Bezimenne, in separatist-controlled Donetsk, only 11 miles east of the outskirts of Mariupol (Photo: Maxar Technologies)

The original US government press release announcing funding for the Conflict Observatory programme, which is no longer available on the State Department’s website, said its mission was to “capture, analyze [sic], and make widely available evidence of Russia-perpetrated war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine”.

It received investment of $6m (£4.6m) and is understood to have received further funding from that point.

A Yale University spokesperson said: “Researchers at the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) were notified recently that government funding for their work on the war in Ukraine has been discontinued. HRL investigates and addresses humanitarian crises worldwide, using data and analysis from open-source and remote sensing. 

“While we are not in a position to comment on the State Department’s decision, we do recognise the importance of HRL’s work and its contributions to international efforts to protect vulnerable populations, including Ukrainian children. Yale remains supportive of its researchers pursuing work that sheds light on urgent global issues.”

When The i Paper approached the State Department for a response, it was referred to the White House, which is yet to comment.

Ukraine’s embassy in the UK declined to comment.

James Smith