Ukrainian officials and humanitarian activists on Wednesday pressed Congress to advance legislation to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism because of Moscow-backed kidnapping of Ukrainian children.
The kidnappings of 20,000 or more children in war-torn Ukraine have become a pressing issue for some lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and they also want to force President Trump to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.
A recently introduced bipartisan Senate bill would compel State Secretary Marco Rubio to add Russia to the list of terrorist countries. Kidnapping is one of the qualifications needed to define a country as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Ukraine Ambassador to the U.S. Olha Stefanishyna told a Senate panel on Wednesday that passing the bill would help prod Russia to return the children.
Almost 20,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022, according to Save Ukraine, a humanitarian organization dedicated to rescuing abducted Ukrainian children.
Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, said that the actual number is closer to 35,000.
Of those kidnapped, around 1,000 have returned home.
The Yale researchers determined the children were taken to at least 210 facilities inside Russia and its occupied territories in Ukraine, and some have been forced into “patriotic reeducation programs.”
“The destiny of Ukrainian boys and girls abducted by Russia, unfortunately, is not an abstract issue. It is a deliberate action conducted as a regular Russian tactic of war,” Ms. Stefanishyna said.
The children were taken from their homes or removed from the orphanages and foster care institutions and forced to change their names, language and citizenship, she said.
Russian kidnapping of Ukrainian children goes back to 2015, she said.
Some of the abducted children were allegedly adopted by Russian families, forced to enroll in paramilitary youth programs and sent to the Russian front lines to fight against Ukrainian forces.
“The ultimate goal is clear and quite genocidal, to make Ukrainians kill each other,” said Kateryna Rashevska, a legal expert for the Regional Center for Human Rights.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chair of the Appropriations subcommittee that held the hearing, said that Russia is stonewalling this issue, refusing to resolve it and instead denying its existence.
The South Carolina Republican extended an invitation to the Russian ambassador, he said, who did not come to the hearing.
Russia and Ukraine are currently discussing Mr. Trump’s proposed peace plan. White House envoy Steve Witkoff flew to Moscow on Tuesday to discuss the plan with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The peace talks remain in flux.
Ms. Stefanishyna said the discussions include the return of Ukrainian children.
“How can you end this war unless every child is accounted for?” Mr. Graham said.
While Mr. Trump has made returning the abducted children a priority, supporters of the legislation hope to increase the pressure on Mr. Putin with the terrorism designation.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who testified at the hearing, said Congress has a moral obligation to take action.
“That begins with sending the following message to the Russian Federation: If you continue to kidnap Ukraine’s children, and if you refuse to return every single last one of them home, you will bear the full weight of being recognized for what you have become, which is a state sponsor of terror,” he said.
