First lady Melania Trump has been publicly credited by the White House and Ukrainian officials with helping secure child reunifications between Russia and Ukraine.
The list includes the return of five children taken from a Kherson children's home after Russian forces seized the southern city in 2022.
The rescue represents a rare breakthrough in a wider campaign that Kyiv says has swept up thousands of children into Russia and occupied territory.
The children included siblings Yuri and Anastasia, who were reunited with their mother, Olga, after nearly four years apart.
According to the Sunday Times, the children had been removed from the Kherson Regional Children's Home, transferred through occupied Crimea, and later placed with a Russian family after receiving Russian documents.
The case has become part of one of the most serious legal and humanitarian disputes of the war in Ukraine.
The U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said on March 12 that Russian authorities committed crimes against humanity by deporting and forcibly transferring Ukrainian children, and by causing enforced disappearances.
The commission said it had verified the deportation or transfer of more than 1,200 children from five Ukrainian regions and found that about 80% of the children in documented cases had not been returned four years later.
It also stated that children were kept in Russian families and institutions long-term, systematically granted Russian citizenship, and separated for extended periods, leading to identity erasure.
Save Ukraine founder Mykola Kuleba said very young children are especially hard to recover because they are more vulnerable to Russian indoctrination and prolonged separation from their families.
Kuleba said Russia uses "deception, indoctrination of children" and reports that children are forbidden to speak Ukrainian and punished for resistance.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in 2023 for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia's commissioner for children's rights, over the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine.
Ukraine's Children of War portal listed 20,000 children as deported or forcibly displaced and 2,047 as returned as of March 15.
The latest return involved five children from the Kherson home and links the broader effort to intervention by the first lady, the Sunday Times reported.
The White House said in December that seven additional children had been reunited with families in Ukraine and, in February, that she had helped facilitate a third reunification.
Reuters reported on Feb. 12 that Washington and Moscow said six more Russian and Ukrainian children were being reunited with their families and credited her efforts.
Publicly documented reunification rounds linked to the first lady account for at least 20 Ukrainian children returned to Ukraine, though the Sunday Times reported the figure as 19.
Russia has denied accusations that it abducted Ukrainian children and has said it was evacuating civilians voluntarily.
Ukrainian officials and advocacy groups say the broader effort remains urgent because thousands of children are still listed as deported or forcibly displaced, and younger children are especially difficult to recover after prolonged separation and exposure to Russian re-education and family placements.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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