The State Department said on Monday that despite concerns that tens of thousands of Ukrainian children allegedly kidnapped by Russian forces remain “safe” after the Trump administration cuts funds for the program.
The data program, led by Yale University's Public Health Humanitarian Research Laboratory, is part of a larger program called the Yale Conflict Observatory, which aims to track a variety of war crimes, including war crimes committed during the Russian-Ukraine war. Yale University confirmed last week that funds for work done in the Ukrainian war were “discontinued”.
The pages on the Conflict Observatory were also deleted from the State Council’s website.
News about the Trump administration’s cuts to funding for the program has raised concerns that the data has been lost or not adequately protected, as the State Department said the data is held in a database controlled by the main contractor of the Yale University Conflict Observatory.
The MP said
The State Department calmed its concerns about what happened to the data collected by the initiative to kidnap children in Ukraine on Monday and told reporters in an agency briefing that the data was “safe”. (Getty Images/Fox)
“The data exists…we know it's safe,” State Department spokesman Tammy Bruce told reporters in a briefing on Monday. “Just because something has changed – because it has happened – [doesn’t mean] It disappears or stops or becomes something we cannot use. ”
Bruce declined to further comment on the federal government's ongoing role or lack of role in protecting data.
“I'm just a reminder that when it comes to those missing children in the world, there are many dynamics happening.”
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The demonstrations included thousands of teddy bears and toys representing the kidnapped of thousands of children after the Ukrainian war. (Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga Mag/afp by Getty Images)
According to The New York Times, Yale researchers reportedly compiled relevant data that will be shared with Europol and the International Criminal Court to file war crimes against Russia after the war is over.
Democratic lawmakers warned in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio that about 20,000 Ukrainian children were kidnapped by Russia and hidden in their adoption system. They raise concerns that cutting funding for Yale University’s program could lead to permanent data loss.
The letter also states that 700,000 people from Ukraine have moved to Russia since the beginning of the war.
In a briefing on Monday, Bruce highlighted the president's concern for missing children and said their return to Ukraine from Russia has been ongoing US-Russian discussions aimed at ending the war.
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People holding banners and Ukrainian flags gathered to extradite Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia in front of the United Nations office in Brussels. (Photography by Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu agent via Getty Images)
The State Department declined to comment on this story and forwarded all questions about the data to MITER. In response to Fox News Digital’s question on data location, a MITER spokesperson said the study of Ukrainian children is currently maintained by former partners [the Conflict Observatory] However, the spokesperson would not point out which particular partner it refers to, because there are several.
The spokesman added that the research conducted there to track kidnapped Ukrainian children has stopped due to the Trump administration’s move to cut Yale funding.
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A Yale spokesman told Fox News Digital Numbers, a Yale spokesman told Fox News Digital Numbers that while we cannot comment on the State Department’s decision, we do recognize the importance of HRL work and its importance to international efforts to protect vulnerable groups, including Ukrainian children. “Yale University still supports its researchers in working on urgent global issues. ”
