Advocates welcome Melania Trump’s work to return Ukrainian children but worry about playing into Putin’s hands

By Betsy Klein, Kylie Atwood, CNN

(CNN) — While praising first lady Melania Trump’s work to return Ukrainian children from Russian captivity, President Donald Trump last week seemed to downplay the estimates of the number of children allegedly abducted since the war began.

Seated across the table in the White House Cabinet Room, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not try to correct his counterpart, nor did he answer a reporter’s question about whether he appreciated the American first lady’s efforts. Instead, he turned, cocked his head and silently nodded.

The moment underscored deep sensitivity around a complex issue that the first lady has sought to resolve through direct communication with Russian President Vladimir Putin. For Melania Trump, who has made the well-being and safety of children a priority, advocacy on this issue appeared to be a natural fit and an opportunity to use her massive global platform to make a difference.

But in the week after she announced the return of eight Ukrainian children to their families, some advocates who have lauded the children’s return also raised concern in conversations with CNN about the way the first lady got involved — and especially her passive-voice characterization of how the children ended up in Russia, fearing that it will only end up playing to Putin.

Speaking from the White House earlier this month, the first lady described “Ukrainian children residing in Russia” and said they’d been “displaced to the Russian Federation because of front-line fighting” — but did not talk about the war crime that many advocates see in Moscow’s alleged abduction of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children.

“Everyone is moving very carefully, but everyone is clear on the point that the first lady’s office needs to hear: Thank you — but it is 35,000 kids, not seven or eight,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, whose Ukraine Conflict Observatory is operating on private donations through the end of the year after the Trump administration cut its funding.

“It is kids who were taken as a war crime and kids who are being militarized and were abducted by a state — not lost in the war. Language matters,” Raymond said.

A September report from the Yale lab found children have been taken to at least 210 locations, including military bases, orphanages and camps, where they have been reeducated in alignment with pro-Russian narratives and in some cases trained for combat. Many of them have had their identities changed, making them increasingly difficult to track over time.

The first lady’s language ignores the reality of the situation — and could play in Putin’s favor, some advocates for the children told CNN.

Bill Taylor, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, applauded Melania Trump’s personal involvement while also noting that Putin likely has ulterior motives.

“Every returned child is wonderful for that family and that child, so that is good. But there are more than 19,000 of these, and I do think that Putin is cynically using this in an attempt to make the Trumps more sympathetic to him,” Taylor told CNN.

The estimates of how many children have been allegedly abducted vary, depending on the source and who’s being counted.

Donald Trump, a day after a two-hour phone call with the Russian leader last week, offered his own take on the number. “Some people say it’s 20,000 and some people say it’s 300,” he said during his Friday meeting with Zelensky at the White House. “So, nobody really knows, but she felt very strongly about the children.”

Taylor doesn’t doubt Melania Trump’s compassion for the Ukrainian children — but he does question the Russian leader’s.

“I think the first lady is genuinely interested in getting the Ukrainian children home. But the fact is that Putin is not. He could return all of these kids and end the war tomorrow if he wanted,” Taylor said.

Melania Trump’s efforts came amid mounting pressure from the Ukrainians, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers and evangelicals to get the Trump administration involved in returning the Ukrainian children.

Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, for example, traveled to New York last month with a pressing mission to raise awareness among the international community. Speaking on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, she warned that at the current rate, it would take 50 years to return the Ukrainian children.

The American first lady, who employs a skeletal staff, kept the news of the eight children’s release to an extremely small circle of aides before revealing it publicly, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Some Ukrainians at the working level who have been focused on the issue were taken aback by the first lady’s involvement. They welcomed her efforts, but worried about Putin working with her only as part of an effort to downplay the enormity of the problem, two sources told CNN.

A Ukrainian official dismissed those concerns and said Volodymyr Zelensky was grateful for the US first lady’s intervention.

In her initial announcement, Trump said she and Putin “have had an open channel of communication regarding the welfare of these children for the past three months.” She pointed to backchannel meetings and calls following a letter she wrote to the Russian leader, hand-delivered by her husband in Alaska in August, that obliquely referenced the “darkness” around children impacted by war.

On Capitol Hill, a group of key Senate Republicans and Democrats had been pushing for a resolution making the return of the abducted children a prerequisite for any negotiated peace agreement to end the war. But despite the first lady’s announcement, the White House has not yet stated a position on the legislation.

While one Republican congressional aide said there is some skepticism regarding Melania Trump’s involvement, for now, there is no appetite on Capitol Hill to push the White House on the topic.

“If there needs to be conversations with the White House on this, there will be, but I have no indication that Melania believes what Putin says,” the aide said, adding that there are some concerns about Putin using a direct line to the first lady to shift the narrative on the allegedly abducted children.

Evangelical groups that have lobbied the White House and the first lady’s office on the issue praised Trump’s receptiveness and argued that the return of eight children was an important turning point.

And Chelsea Sobolik, director of government relations at World Relief, an evangelical humanitarian organization, noted that the effort also marked a critical recognition from Russia.

“Up until recently, Russia was denying this issue — or they were giving all these false narratives. So I think the fact that this is making waves at the top levels of our US government does mean there’s movement. I view this as a first step, not a last step. There’s so much more work that needs to be done,” Sobolik said.

She signed onto a letter from a group of evangelical leaders thanking Trump — but also encouraging her to keep her foot on the gas.

“We continue to urge the Trump Administration to ensure that this remains a central issue and that all estimated 35,000 children are returned as a precondition to any peace talks,” they wrote.

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