In an institutional statement announced with due solemnity by the White House, the first lady of the United States, Melania Trump, said this Friday that she is in talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to repatriate Ukrainian children forcibly transferred to Russia and that some have already been returned to their families. “This continues to be a continuous effort,” he assured from the White House, alluding to the development of the management.
President Donald Trump’s wife has stated that Putin has responded to a letter from her and that there is an open line of communication, a channel that has allowed the return of eight Ukrainian minors to their country in the last 24 hours. “My team has worked directly with President Putin’s team to ensure the safe reunification of children with their families between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, eight children have been reunited with their families during the last 24 hours,” said the first lady.
The communication channel was supposedly opened after during their summit in Alaska in August, Trump gave Putin the letter signed by Melania in which she asked for protection for children of war. “When President Putin received my letter last August, he responded in writing, showing willingness to engage in direct dialogue with me and providing information about Ukrainian children residing in Russia. Since then, President Putin and I have maintained an open channel of communication regarding the well-being of these children,” he said.
This communication channel includes the calls and meetings held to “cooperate mutually for the benefit of all the people involved in this war.”
Regarding the eight returned children, the first lady explained that three were evacuated to Russia without their parents “due to the fighting on the front lines” near where they lived, and the other five, “separated from their families across the borders due to the conflict”, all of them in the Donbas area, occupied by Russia and which Moscow does not want to give up. The Kremlin has argued that they are ethnically Russian minors to justify the transfer. In 2024, kyiv estimated the number of minors kidnapped by the neighboring country at 20,000.
“Russia has demonstrated a willingness to release objective and detailed information that reflects the current situation. The Russian Federation provided biographies and photographs of each child involved in this week’s assessment, along with a summary of the social, medical and psychological services provided to Ukrainian children,” he added, ensuring that Moscow has also agreed to repatriate with their families those forced to move to Russia as minors. and now they are 18 years old.
“This remains an effort in progress. Plans are already underway to reunify more children in the immediate future. I hope peace comes soon; it can begin with our children,” he concluded.
Added to this sudden display of bilateral warmth is a message from the president on his Truth social network, in which the president thanks his Russian counterpart for his words about his role in achieving a peace agreement for Gaza. “Thank you to President Putin,” Trump wrote, with a clip from a video in which the Kremlin leader states that, unlike others who have done nothing for the world, Trump “solves complex problems and crises that last decades.” After the fiasco of the aforementioned Alaska summit, in which he rolled out the red carpet for Putin, and recently stating that he sees Ukraine capable of recovering lost territory and even winning the war – a statement that contradicts his previous statements -, the Trump couple seems to send signs of a thaw to the Kremlin.
For more updates, visit our homepage: NewsTimesWire
