Zelensky: No agreement with Russia on returning Ukrainian children

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Russia had been stonewalling negotiations on the return of Ukraine children, thousands of whom have been forcibly transferred to Russia over the course of its invasion.

“We cannot reach an agreement with them on the return of the children,” Zelensky told reporters in response to a question from NewsNation’s Robert Sherman.

He added that while other countries had been able to facilitate the occasional returns of groups of children, his government had not been able to reach a widespread agreement.

“We approach them, give them lists, and they arrange the returns,” he said of Ukraine’s negotiating partners, including Qatar and the Vatican. “We hand over lists of children, and they help us. At the level of ombudsmen — for example, the Ukrainian and the Russian ones — this is unfortunately still impossible.”

Since invading Ukraine in 2022, Russian forces have abducted thousands of Ukrainian children and attempted to assign them Russian citizenship, have them attend Russian schools, or be adopted into Russian families.

Estimates vary on how many children have been forcibly taken. A group of researchers at Yale have tracked at least 19,000 children that have been deported to Russia, but say that the actual number is likely far higher.

A bipartisan group of senators, including Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), introduced a resolution in May calling for the children to be returned before any peace agreement to end the war is finalized.

President Trump is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska later this week for peace talks. The American president said last week that he would be willing to discuss swapping territory between Kyiv and Moscow.

For his part, Zelensky said that the return of Ukrainian children was an important part of negotiations alongside seeking a ceasefire.

“That is why we wanted to get certain matters settled in this trilateral track: ceasefire, an all-for-all exchange, and the return of children,” he said. “This is something everyone benefits from: President Trump benefits, the Russians lose nothing, the Ukrainians lose nothing. It’s a fair compromise.”

He added that Trump may be able to extract concessions from the Russian president.

”Putin always speaks in ultimatums. But I believe he does not have enough leverage against Trump to speak to him in ultimatums,” he said.