“State Department Preserves Data on Abducted Ukrainian Children, Alleviating Lawmakers’ Fears”

The State Department has confirmed that information on Ukrainian children abducted by the Russian government during the war in Ukraine has been preserved, despite fears that it had been deleted. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced this development on Thursday night, reassuring lawmakers and the public that the data is secure.

The data on abducted Ukrainian children was part of a project under the State Department’s Conflict Observatory program, which was initiated during the Biden administration. Researchers at Yale University were tracking tens of thousands of abducted children, creating a database to document the atrocities committed by Russia in Ukraine. The Conflict Observatory also monitored the civil war in Sudan.

Lawmakers became concerned when funding for the group tracking the abductions was cut, leading to fears that the database had been deleted. However, Mr. Rubio confirmed that the data is safe and will be transferred to the appropriate party. The program itself will no longer operate due to the funding cuts implemented when President Trump took office in January.

The data is expected to be transferred to the International Criminal Court and Europol, Europe’s main law enforcement agency, for further investigation and potential legal action. The Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab, which was leading the effort to track the abductions, had documented over 30,000 children taken from Ukraine to Russia and Belarus since the invasion began in 2022.

In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and an aide over the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children. The Kremlin has denied accusations of war crimes but has openly acknowledged the transfers of Ukrainian children to Russia.

The Yale lab had intended for U.S. officials to hand over the database to Europol and the International Criminal Court to aid in bringing charges against Russian officials involved in the abductions. With the recent efforts to preserve the data, the project is set to remain operational for six weeks to facilitate the transfer of the database.

The main contractor for the program, the MITRE Corporation, confirmed that the database has not been deleted and is in the hands of another specialist group, likely another subcontractor involved in the Conflict Observatory program. Lawmakers had raised concerns about the database’s status, prompting reassurances from MITRE that the data is secure and intact.