Volodymyr Sahaidak, head of the Kherson region's Children's Centre of Social and Psychological Rehabilitation, shows a portrait of a boy whom he hid with other children during a Russian occupation near Kherson, Ukraine. (Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)
The Trump administration reversed its decision to terminate a U.S. initiative that documented alleged Russian war crimes on Thursday following a report by The Washington Post and other media outlets, according to congressional aides familiar with the matter.
The initiative, known as the Conflict Observatory, tracked the mass deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian-controlled territory using satellite imagery, biometric data and other digital forensic tools — which contributed to multiple criminal cases, including the International Criminal Court’s landmark indictment of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The temporary policy reversal, which has not been previously reported, gives the observatory authorization and funding for six additional weeks to complete the transfer of its repository to the European Union’s law enforcement agency, EUROPOL, to assist in the prosecution of crimes inside and outside Ukraine.
The Trump administration’s actions had barred the observatory’s transmission of evidence to prosecutors pursuing criminal cases, including the ICC’s indictment of Putin for the “unlawful transfer” of children during the war. The repository tracked the identities and locations of several thousand Ukrainian children that went missing and are believed to be in Russia or Russian-occupied territory.
The initiative, funded by the State Department and spearheaded by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, was one of thousands terminated at the behest of President Donald Trump appointee Peter Marocco and U.S. DOGE Service, the budget-slashing government arm run by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
But a diverse coalition of advocates including Democrats and Republicans in Congress and Christian evangelicals convinced the Trump administration to reverse course, temporarily sparing the observatory the same fate of thousands of other terminated programs. Researchers are now hoping European governments will step in to fund the initiative in Washington’s absence.
“The termination of this contract never should have happened, but I’m grateful to see State change its mind,” said Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), who led a letter urging the Trump administration to reinstate the program. “This shows that bipartisan, bicameral pressure got the administration to change course, but this still isn’t good enough.”
“State is only funding closeout costs and transmission to our European allies,” Landsman added. “We should be leading on this issue and I hope the State Department will doing everything it can to regain its leadership role in finding these kids.”
Landsman urged U.S. officials to prioritize the return of the Ukrainian children in ongoing talks with the Russian government over ending the war in Ukraine.
“The war has to end with Putin out of Ukraine and every one of these children back home,” he said.
Another letter in support of the observatory included a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina).
Congressional aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss government discussions, were informed on Thursday of the decision to reinstate the program.
When the State Department terminated the program earlier this year, it did not include any guidance for preserving the repository, resulting in confusion and panic among the initiative’s implementers about the potential deletion of the repository.
For several days, the State Department, Yale and MITRE, the nongovernmental organization that helped run the project, were unable to confirm that the database was secure or was not due to be deleted. In the end, the contracting firm that manages the database, Quiet Professionals, decided to preserve the observatory’s repository despite a lack of guidance from the State Department, said two people familiar with the matter.
Quiet Professionals declined to comment.
The issue of Ukraine’s missing children has significant implications for Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said any agreement to stop the fighting must include Russia’s return of missing Ukrainian children and accountability for those responsible for their abduction. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also recently told reporters that the return of the children would be an important issue to “unravel.”
In 2023, ICC judges issued an arrest warrant for Putin and the country’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, saying the two bore individual responsibility for the war crimes of “unlawful deportation” and “unlawful transfer” of children from occupied areas of Ukraine.
The move was largely symbolic since Russia, like the United States, does not accept the ICC’s jurisdiction. But the warrant has created difficulties for Putin traveling to countries that cooperate with the court. It also gave credence to Kyiv’s long-standing claims that Moscow has carried out the removal of thousands of children from Ukrainian territory.
The forced relocation of Ukrainian children to Russia or deeper into Russian-controlled territory has become one of the most fraught issues over the past three years of the war. Ukraine describes the process of moving children to Russia as an attempt to erase their Ukrainian identity and indoctrinate them with Russian ideologies.
The observatory’s repository includes detailed dossiers, photos, names and other metadata related to children from Ukraine being adopted and fostered by Russian parents.
The move to shutter the project was seen by Democrats as the latest indication of Trump’s distrust and skepticism of Ukraine. Trump, while often praising the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers fending off a Russian invasion, has taken a critical view of Zelensky, calling him a “dictator” and accusing him of starting the conflict despite Russia initiating hostilities.
Trump’s Justice Department also recently decided to withdraw the United States from a multinational group designed to hold officials in Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Iran responsible for crimes in Ukraine.
While Trump’s supporters have backed his diplomatic push, his termination of the observatory disturbed some of his political allies, including conservative Christian organizations that called for the administration to reverse its decision.
“The abduction of children strikes a nerve that I hope will help awaken more Americans to the horrors of the Russian invasion and occupation of parts of Ukraine,” Galen Carey, vice president of government relations at the National Association of Evangelicals, told The Post.