Elon Musk’s cuts to US government funding have halted the work of a Yale University team who have helped save hundreds of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, it has emerged
Elon Musk’s massive spending cuts have grounded an elite team who rescue Ukrainian children abducted by Vladimir Putin’s troops, it has emerged.
The Tesla billionaire has slashed billions from the US government and foreign aid budgets since being appointed by Donald Trump to lead DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) in January – forcing vital projects around the world to close due to a lack of funding. This has included major initiatives tackling malaria and AIDS in Africa, as well as those providing access to water in developing countries. Now, cost-cutting measures back in the US have targeted a group of experts who have helped bring home hundreds of children forcibly deported to Russia.
Nearly 20,000 children have been abducted by Putin’s forces since the invasion in 2022, according to the Ukrainian government. Until now, the US Government has been funding a team of researchers at Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, who use open source technology to track down the lost children and send their findings to authorities in Ukraine to help repatriate them. Hundreds of youngsters have been brought home thanks to their efforts – but this work is now set to grind to a halt following Elon Musk’s recent cuts to federal government funding, according to the i newspaper. The Mirror has approached the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab for comment.
Shocking accounts from intelligence experts over the past three years have detailed how the children have been taken by Putin’s troops from occupied Ukrainian territories and transported across the border, including on at least on one occasion in Russian presidential aircraft. Upon arriving in Russia they are put into a network of camps and foster homes, and put through “re-education” programmes designed to strip them of Ukrainian identity. Many are then placed within Russian families. Details of these mass abductions form part of International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was issued in March 2023 on war crimes charges.
Britain has also imposed sanctions against people identified as “perpetrators of Russia’s forced deportation and brainwashing of Ukrainian children”. Announcing the measure in late 2024, Foreign Secretary David Lammy described the abductions as “a systematic attempt to erase Ukrainian cultural and national identity”, and said Vladimir Putin’s targeting of Ukrainian children “shows the depths he will go to in his mission to erase Ukraine and its people from the map”. Sanctions have targeted the All-Russian Young Army Military Patriotic Social Movement (Yunarmia), a Russian paramilitary organisation responsible for many of the kidnappings, as well as other individuals from care homes and boarding schools who have aided the transfer of children across the border.
The Save Children UA initiative, set up by Volodymyr Zelensky in 2023 to help reunite the children with their families back in Ukraine, has so far seen 1,243 returned from deportation, forced transfers, or temporarily occupied territories. Campaigners have pointed out that there are still thousands of youngsters that are still apart from their families, and have urged the US to include the repatriation of Ukrainian children in any future peace deal.