WASHINGTON – Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) led a bipartisan letter calling on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to continue supporting efforts to investigate Russia’s abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children. 

“We write to convey serious concerns over reports that the State Department has terminated a contract with a university-based research team that is working to find Ukrainian children abducted by the Russian government,” the senators said.

The Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health stated that it was recently notified that government funding for the lab’s work on the war in Ukraine, including the open source research tracing Russia’s forcible deportation of Ukrainian children, has been discontinued. 

Russian child abduction cases now number more than 19,500, according to the Ukrainian initiative Bring Kids Back UA, and the total may be higher.

“In December 2024, the Yale research team published the most comprehensive public report to date on the subject. The report concluded that the Russian government ‘has engaged in the systematic, intentional, and widespread coerced adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine.’ It detailed an operation initiated by President Putin and subordinate officials to ‘Russify’ those children, and documented 314 individual cases,” the senators continued.

“If, in fact, State Department funding for this program has been terminated, we request that you provide information regarding the decision-making procedure and justification, and immediately resume U.S. support for this critical work … We underscore that it must remain the policy of the United States to pursue accountability for the Russian Federation’s atrocities in Ukraine,” the senators concluded. 

The letter was also signed by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.). 

Background:

Grassley is an outspoken critic of Russia's threats and aggression. In a speech on the Senate floor marking the third anniversary of Putin’s invasion, Grassley reaffirmed his support for the people of Ukraine. Grassley immediately condemned Russia’s 2022 assault on Ukraine, calling it “inhumane” and pointing out that Putin is tragically “killing innocent people like Stalin did in the 1930s.”

After Russia began indiscriminately bombing Ukraine and murdering innocent civilians, Grassley joined his colleagues in introducing a resolution to hold Putin and his allies accountable for war crimes. The resolution passed the Senate unanimously. Last month, Grassley led the introduction of a resolution acknowledging the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and expressing the Senate’s unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty

Read more about Grassley’s efforts to support Ukraine and hold Russia accountable HERE.

-30-