The administration of Donald Trump has decided to continue the work of the American initiative Conflict Observatory, which records Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine. This decision came after significant pressure from the media, Democrats, Republicans, and religious leaders.
This is reported by Kyiv24
According to the new changes, the initiative has received additional funding for six weeks, which will allow it to transfer its database to Europol. This, in turn, supports European investigations into war crimes.
It was previously reported that the Trump administration had suspended funding for this initiative, which documented the alleged military crimes of Russia, including the mass deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. The Washington Post noted that this decision complicated the transfer of evidence to prosecutors investigating numerous criminal cases, including the indictment by the International Criminal Court against Russian President Vladimir Putin for the “illegal transfer” of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine.
“This move has been a catastrophic blow to efforts to document war crimes and hold the guilty accountable,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab.
The U.S. State Department has denied rumors about the destruction of data regarding Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. The Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, stated that Russia has illegally taken about 150,000 children from Ukraine, while the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Children’s Rights, Daria Gerasimchuk, emphasized that this concerns “several hundred thousand children, that is, about 200-300 thousand.”
As of February 26, 2025, Ukraine has managed to return 1,227 children from the territory of the Russian Federation and temporarily occupied lands, according to Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova, who are suspected of committing war crimes, including the forcible deportation of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine.