US President Donald Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, raised the situation of children in Ukraine and Russia in a personal letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, two White House officials said Friday.
President Trump delivered the letter to Putin during their top negotiations in Alaska, the officials told Reuters. Slovenian-born Melania Trump was not on the trip to Alaska.
The officials would not disclose the contents of the letter other than to say that the said abductions of children who are the result of the war in Ukraine.
The existence of the letter was not previously reported.
Russia’s seizures of Ukrainian children have been deeply sensitive to Ukraine.
Ukraine has called the abductions of tens of thousands of her children led to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without the consent of family or guardians a war crime that meets the UN Treaty definition of genocide.
In the past, Moscow has said it has protected vulnerable children from a war zone.
The United Nations Human Rights Office has said that Russia has inflicted suffering on millions of Ukrainian children and violated their rights since its invasion of Ukraine on a full scale began in 2022.
Trump and Putin met for almost three hours at a US military base in Anchorage without reaching a ceasefire agreement in the war in Ukraine.
