U.S. First Lady Melania Trump raised the plight of children caught up in the war in Ukraine in a personal letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, two White House officials said on Friday.
President Donald Trump hand-delivered the letter to Putin during their summit at a U.S. military base in Anchorage, Alaska. The existence of the letter had not been previously reported. Melania Trump, who was born in Slovenia, did not attend the talks in Alaska.
Details of the letter were not disclosed, but officials said it specifically highlighted the suffering of children in both Ukraine and Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022.
The fate of Ukrainian children taken into Russia or Russian-occupied territory has become one of the most sensitive issues of the war. Kyiv accuses Moscow of abducting tens of thousands of children without parental or guardian consent. Ukrainian officials say the transfers amount to war crimes and meet the U.N. treaty definition of genocide.
Moscow has denied wrongdoing, saying it relocated children for their safety from a war zone. The United Nations Human Rights Office has accused Russia of violating children’s rights on a massive scale, saying millions of young people in Ukraine have suffered as a result of the invasion.
The letter was delivered as Trump and Putin met for nearly three hours in Anchorage. Both leaders later said progress had been made on unspecified issues, but no ceasefire deal was announced. Trump said he and Putin had made “some headway,” while Putin repeated long-held Russian demands to address what he called the “root causes” of the conflict.
The war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year, remains the deadliest in Europe since World War Two, with more than a million people killed or wounded, including thousands of civilians.
