THE RUSSIA CONNECTION“A Catastrophic Blow”: U.S. Shuts Unit Investigating War Crimes in Ukraine
Offering more support for Russia’s policy goals, the Trump administration has cut all funding for efforts to document and gather evidence on Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine. Experts described the administration’s move as a “a catastrophic blow” to efforts to document war crimes and bring people to justice.
A Yale University unit that has played a key role in gathering evidence on Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine will close down on March 28 after the US State Department cut funding.
In an exclusive interview, the executive director of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, Nathaniel Raymond, told RFE/RL that the move was “a catastrophic blow” to efforts to document war crimes and bring people to justice.
Raymond said the unit was currently tracking the location of 35,000 children abducted from Ukraine by Russia. Abducting children is a war crime, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has been indicted for it by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“The loss of our work is another win for those who want to obscure the truth and who want to prevent accountability,” Raymond said.
Massive Cuts
In response to a request for comment from RFE/RL, the State Department confirmed funding had been stopped. For further details it referred reporters to MITRE, a nonprofit organization that works on government contracts, which did not immediately respond.
Asked why he thought the funding was cut, Raymond said: “I wish I knew the answer to that. It’s hard not to take it personally. But it also is part of a wave of cancellations across the humanitarian and human rights field.”
Since taking office, the US government has imposed massive cuts on USAID, the Education Department, and overseas broadcasting organization such as RFE/RL.
The move is also a further instance of the Trump administration pulling back from international cooperation to document war crimes committed by Russia since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
It comes after officials at Eurojust, the European Union’s agency for criminal justice cooperation, told RFE/RL this week that Washington had stopped working with its unit specializing on war crimes committed in Ukraine.
The International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression (ICPA) provides logistical help, training, and other help to Ukrainian prosecutors investigating some 153,000 cases.
Russia Taking Children from Ukraine
The Yale unit’s work is based on open-source investigation and has provided detailed evidence that Russia has a systematic program of taking children from Ukraine.
In its last report, in December, Yale investigators documented the fate of 314 children who were subject to a “systematic program of coerced adoption and fostering” by Russian individuals and families.
