Olena Zelenska Says 20,000 Ukrainian Children Still Missing, Cites Trump Administration Funding and Melania Trump’s Advocacy

In a newly aired interview on Fox News’ 'The Sunday Briefing,' Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska warned that at the current pace it could take 'dozens of years' to return all Ukrainian children believed to have been forcibly relocated by Russia since the 2022 invasion. Zelenska said roughly 20,000 children are still missing and that only about 2,000 have been brought back, crediting a growing international coalition and publicly praising former U.S. First Lady Melania Trump for helping build a 'community' of supporters and draw attention to the issue. The piece reports that the Trump administration has recently committed an additional $25 million to support efforts to locate and repatriate these children, who investigations say have been scattered across a network of more than 200 facilities in Russia and occupied territories where some face 're‑education' and even military‑style training, according to Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab. Zelenska accused Russia of obstructing efforts to track the children’s whereabouts, and her remarks are feeding online debate in the U.S. about whether Washington is doing enough to confront what Kyiv and human‑rights groups describe as systematic child deportations that may amount to war crimes.