Elon Musk's DOGE Cuts Hit Team Saving Kidnapped Ukrainian Children
The work of a Yale University team that helped rescue Ukrainian children abducted by Russia has been defunded, according to reports.
www.newsweek.com
“… The
i Paper says Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has paused financial support for researchers at Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).
A university spokesperson confirmed to
Newsweek that government funding for its work on the war in Ukraine had been discontinued.
… The Ukrainian government has said that nearly 20,000 children have been abducted by Russia from the occupied territories of Ukraine since the start of the war as part of a program to eradicate Ukrainian identity. Kyiv says the children are put into camps and foster homes, indoctrinated to Russian customs and brainwashed into turning against Ukraine. The decision to cut funding for the U.S. program could harm Ukraine's ability to reunite children with their families.
Russian president
Vladimir Putin and his Children's Rights Commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, have been issued with arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the deportation of Ukrainian children.
… The U.S. government has paused funding for the Yale University team which used open source technology including satellite imagery, social media and Russian publications, to trace the lost children and share their findings with the Ukrainian authorities to help them locate the abducted minors.
Ukrainian organization Bring Kids Back UA, is one of the groups relying on the evidence to help find children and repatriate them.
The Yale lab is part of the Conflict Observatory program, set up with funding from the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations to investigate Russia-perpetrated war crimes.
A report before Trump's inauguration said the lab gathered evidence on 314 children from Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in eastern Ukraine aged between two and 17, according to the
i Paper.
U.K. outlets
The Mirror and the
Telegraph also reported the defunding story which was
carriedby Ukrainian news outlets amid a growing debate over recent U.S. federal cuts impacting Washington's international programs.
A Yale spokesperson told
Newsweek the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) were notified government funding for their work on the war in Ukraine had been discontinued. …”