An international effort to trace and rescue tens of thousands of children kidnapped from Ukraine to Russia and prosecute those responsible has been crippled by the US state department’s deletion of evidence.
The Trump administration cut funding to Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which was compiling a database of alleged Russian war crimes, including the abduction of an estimated 35,000 children from occupied areas of Ukraine, last month.
Using satellite imagery and other surveillance systems provided through the US government, the Yale researchers were monitoring 116 sites in Russia.
A Yale source said the US state department deleted the evidence which would have been used as part of rescue efforts to get the children home to Ukraine. It would also have been used to prosecute those behind their abductions – including Russian president Vladimir Putin.
”It is unclear whether it was by accident or intent, but it may reveal or it may cause potential criminal liability for the Trump administration, given international prohibitions against the destruction of war crimes evidence,” the Yale insider told The Independent.
Further liability could be attached to the Trump administration for the destruction of evidence in the prosecution of Putin, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court.
Researchers and lawyers working with the Yale project have also had to stop sharing the data with the European Union which is also investigating the abduction of children through EUROPOL.
“They [the state department] deleted the crime base on the arrest warrant on Putin… whether they did it by accident, or they did it on purpose it’s a hell of a favour,” the Yale source told The Independent.
“The worst part of this is not that it screws up prosecution, that’s bad. The worst part is that it screws up our active efforts to try to get the kids back across the front line, physically,” they added
The team works closely with SaveUkraine, a charity that has repatriated 610 Ukrainian children so far – and the Ukrainian government.
Trump held talks with Putin on Tuesday over the future of Ukraine. Since his inauguration he has consistently taken a strongly pro-Russian position on Ukraine and derided its democratically elected president Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator”.
Mr Zelensky has made the return of his country’s young people from Russia a priority in ceasefire, and longer term peace negotiations between Ukraine, the US, and Russia.
The Yale university project had been one of the US state departments most important contributions to international law and the prosecution of alleged war crimes. It had produced 16 major reports on Ukraine and contributed to six indictments at the ICC against Russians.
Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, his commissioner for children’s rights, are among those facing an international arrest warrant issued by the ICC as individually responsible for “unlawful deportation” and the “unlawful transfer” of children from parts of Ukraine captured by Russia. Lvova-Belova has claimed to have adopted a Ukrainian “orphan”.
Russia has illegally annexed four Ukrainian provinces it has captured large parts of, has issued Russian passports to its residents, and is forcing young men into its army to fight their own country under the Kremlin’s banner.
Moscow has also tried to eradicate the Ukrainian language from the school curriculum in the occupied areas. And has forcibly transferred large numbers of children deep into Russian territory. Mass murder and forced removals of Ukrainians under Stalin resulted in a genocide known as the Holodomor, when more than three million people were starved to death in the early 1930s..
Details of alleged war crimes were held on a highly secure database connected to the CIA code named “Caesar”. Caesar no longer exists, several Yale sources said.
“The 1996 Jones War Crimes Act, a federal criminal statute, prohibits all violations of the Geneva Convention as part of US criminal law. It is a war crime under Geneva to destroy evidence of a war crime,” the Yale expert told The Independent.
The US State Department has been contacted for comment.
