US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce denied removing data pertaining to the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russia
This is a conspiracy theory “or fear about data being deleted is untrue” she said, adding it is false.
“The data exists, it was not in the State Department’s control. It was the people running that framework, we know who was running the data and the website we know fully that the data exists and [it’s] not been deleted and not missing,” she said.
The statement comes after the Trump administration halted funding for a key US program investigating and identifying children who disappeared from Ukraine into Russia.
Following this decision, a group of bipartisan lawmakers stated the importance of this data.
“In conjunction with the US State Department, Yale HRL had been preserving evidence of abducted children from Ukraine it had identified, to be shared with Europol and the government of Ukraine to secure their return. Yale HRL’s funding has been terminated and the status of the secure evidence repository is unknown. This vital resource cannot be lost,” they wrote.
They added that they have grounds to believe that the HRL’s data has been permanently deleted “and that conflict observers like the HRL no longer have access to the satellite imagery they need to track the movements of abducted children.”
Meanwhile, Trump pledged to address the issue during his latest call with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The abduction of children is the central issue behind an international war crimes arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and one of his top officials.
