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By Maya Mehrara
News Reporter
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio is facing questions from Democratic lawmakers over whether key evidence of Russian war crimes shared with his department has been deleted.
In a letter seen by Reuters and The New York Times, Rep. Greg Landsman and other Democrats warn that the data may have been permanently erased following the Trump administration's decision to shut down a Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab program tracking Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia.
"We have reason to believe that the data from the repository has been permanently deleted. If true, this would have devastating consequences," says the letter.
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Newsweek reached out to the U.S. Department of State for comment via email outside of business hours. Newsweek also reached out to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab, and Ohio Representative Greg Landsman's team for comment via email.
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Why It Matters
Without this tracking program and its data, thousands of Ukrainian children could remain lost in Russia after their abduction, and potential war crimes could go undetected and unpunished.
Kyiv could have a continuing reason to keep fighting Russia, rather than pursuing a peace agreement, as one of its red lines in negotiations is that the kidnapped children must be returned to Ukraine.
What To Know
The data now feared to have been deleted was used to track the forced relocation of Ukrainian children to Russia—an issue that international organizations, including the United Nations, have labeled a potential war crime. Lawmakers warn that evidence critical to future war crimes investigations may be irretrievable.
Their letter said the State Department and the Yale research center had been "preserving evidence of abducted children from Ukraine it had identified... to secure their return."
An unidentified individual familiar with the work of the Yale Center verified the letter's contents and told the NYT that the details were accurate.
Researchers at Yale were compiling a database known as Caesar for the State Department to use to share information on abducted Ukrainian children with Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union, and the International Criminal Court, which could charge Russian officials, said the newspaper.
The estimates regarding the number of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia vary, as Ukrainian officials have said Moscow has taken 20,000 children, while Yale researchers said in earlier reports that it has tracked 30,000.
The database contains information on 6,000 Ukrainian children taken to Russia, and more than 2,400 to Belarus, and it has detailed information, including names and photographs in dossiers, on 314 of the children in Russia, said the NYT.
An unidentified source familiar with the tracking program told Reuters that DOGE's cutting funding for the program has resulted in the deletion of $26 million of war crimes evidence protecting Putin. They said, "They took $26 million of U.S. taxpayers money used for war crimes data and threw it into the woodchipper, including the dossiers on all the children. If you wanted to protect President Putin from prosecution, you nuke that thing. And they did it. It's the final court-admissible version with all the metadata."
The Democrats are also asking President Donald Trump's administration to restore the government-funded program led by Yale's lab.
They added in the letter: "Our government is providing an essential service—one that does not require the transfer of weapons or cash to Ukraine—in pursuit of the noble goal of rescuing these children. We must, immediately, resume the work to help Ukraine bring these children home."
The letter also calls for the Trump administration to impose sanctions punishing Russian and Belarusian officials involved in deporting the children, and said: "These egregious, openly acknowledged violations of the rights of children afforded under international law demand consequences."
The Democratic lawmakers' call for action swiftly follows Trump adviser Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) pausing its financial support for the Yale researchers on March 15. These cuts are part of his larger efforts to reduce government spending.
The Yale University team, part of the Conflict Observatory program which investigates Russia-perpetrated war crimes, used open source technology including satellite imagery, social media and Russian publications, to find lost Ukrainian children.
Prior to Trump's inauguration in January, a report by the lab gathered evidence on 314 children from Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in eastern Ukraine aged between two and 17, according to the i Paper.
What People Are Saying
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Landsman wrote: "Putin has stolen tens of thousands of children from Ukraine from their families and communities. We can't abandon them. We have to support every effort to bring these children home."
The House Foreign Affairs Committee Dems wrote on X: "As if sidelining Ukraine from negotiations & cozying up to Putin wasn't enough, the admin is now helping whitewash Russian war crimes by undermining work to return ~35k Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. Another unconscionable result of so-called Trump-Musk 'efficiency.'"
In a statement to Newsweek, when asked how the deletion war crimes evidence might be viewed, William Schabas, a professor of international law at Middlesex University London, said: "Certainly a stupid mistake, but unlikely it is a war crime. If it could be shown that the purpose of deleting the database was to sabotage the investigation it might then be possible to charge it as a crime of obstructing justice. But even obstructing justice is not a 'war crime.'"
A Yale University spokesperson previously told Newsweek: "Researchers at the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) were notified recently that government funding for their work on the war in Ukraine has been discontinued."
"While we are not in a position to comment on the State Department's decision, we do recognize the importance of HRL's work and its contributions to international efforts to protect vulnerable populations, including Ukrainian children. Yale remains supportive of its researchers pursuing work that sheds light on urgent global issues."
What Happens Next
It is unclear whether the Trump administration will restore the program and resume funding its ventures.
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