State Dept denies deleting data on halted program tracking abducted Ukrainian children

By Daphne Psaledakis and Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department on Wednesday denied that data collected in a government-funded program that helps track thousands of abducted Ukrainian children had been deleted, but acknowledged that the effort had been terminated as part of Washington's sweeping freeze on almost all foreign aid.

In a letter addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Democratic lawmakers sounded alarm that the data from the repository might have been permanently deleted.

Speaking at a daily press briefing, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said suggestions that data was deleted were false.

"The data exists," Bruce said. "It was not in the State Department's control. It was the people running that framework, but we know who is running the data and the website, and we know fully that the data exists and it's not been deleted and it's not missing."

Bruce also suggested that President Donald Trump by bringing up the issue in a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy earlier on Wednesday may mean cooperation between the two countries on the topic could continue.

"The president of the most powerful country in the world, saying, I'm going to do something here... I think that's a pretty good, clear indication that we can still work on issues that matter and make them happen without it being in a certain structure that has existed," she said.

The research program conducted by Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab was part of an effort that began under President Joe Biden to document potential violations of international law and crimes against humanity by Russia and Russia-aligned forces in its invasion of Ukraine.

The Trump administration paused the program on January 25, the unnamed State Department spokesperson said in an email, as the Republican president ordered a broad review to prevent what he says is wasteful spending of U.S. taxpayer dollars with causes that do not align with U.S. interests.

"Following a review, the U.S. Department of State decided to terminate the foreign assistance award supporting the Ukraine Conflict Observatory," a different spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said the data resides on a platform owned by MITRE, a non-governmental organization that operates research and development centers, according to its website.

"To the best of MITRE’s knowledge and belief, the research data that was compiled has not been deleted and is currently maintained by a former partner on this contract," it said in a statement.

RESEARCHES LOSE ACCESS

In his call with Zelenskiy, Trump inquired about the children who had gone missing from Ukraine during the war, including the ones that had been abducted, the White House said in a statement.

"President Trump promised to work closely with both parties to help make sure those children were returned home," the White House said.

Ukraine has called the abductions of tens of thousands of its children taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without the consent of family or guardians a war crime that meets the U.N. treaty definition of genocide.

Russia has said it has been evacuating people voluntarily and to protect vulnerable children from the war zone.

The decision to stop the program means researchers will lose access to a trove of information, including satellite imagery and other data, about some 30,000 children taken from Ukraine, the lawmakers said in their letter.

Last December, a report produced as a result of the research said Russian presidential aircraft and funds were used in a program that took children from occupied Ukrainian territories, stripped them of Ukrainian identity and placed them with Russian families.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the alleged war crime of deportation of Ukrainian children.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Bill Berkrot)