LOS ANGELES, March 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it is providing $25 million in new assistance to support the identification, return, and rehabilitation of Ukrainian children.
The funding will support programs that "identify and track children that have been forcibly transferred away from their home" and will support the Ukrainian government and local partners to care for returning children, the department said.
Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, who is visiting the U.S.,
has been advocating for the release of Ukrainian children and met State Department officials during her trip. She said she was grateful to the U.S. administration and Congress for "making this a priority".
"Behind every number is a child, a family, a life waiting to be restored. Every Ukrainian child must come home," she wrote in a post on X on Thursday.
The "Bring Kids Back UA" initiative, a programme under President Volodymyr Zelenskiy aimed at bringing to safe areas children who had been deported to Russia or confined to Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, said on Thursday that over 2,000 children had been returned.
Ukraine is currently processing 20,570 cases of deported and forcibly transferred children, it said.
A U.N. investigation found earlier this month that Russia's deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children since Moscow's full-scale invasion in 2022 amounted to crimes against humanity.
Russia has repeatedly denied abducting Ukrainian children, saying it acted to keep them safe from the fighting.
(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Anna Pruchnicka, writing by Christian Martinez; Editing by Caitlin Webber, Aidan Lewis)
