The White House said Melania Trump helped “reunite another child with her family”. It’s a Russian woman who lived in Ukraine (corrected)

The White House announced on August 17 that the US First Lady had helped reunite another child separated from her family by war. As it later turned out, the child was a Russian woman who had lived in Ukraine for some time.

“First Lady Melania Trump facilitated the reunification of another child with her family on Monday, August 17, 2026, after she was separated during the conflict between Ukraine and Russia,” the White House said in a statement.

Corrected: In the first version of this news, Babel wrote that the child was returned to Ukraine. This is not true — the White House statement does not specify the childʼs citizenship or where exactly he was returned. We apologize for this error.

Instead, Russian Commissioner for Childrenʼs Rights Maria Lvova-Belova wrote that the case concerns a 14-year-old girl who was born in Moscow, but later moved to her grandmother in Ukraine for a number of reasons.

After the full-scale invasion began, the woman was unable to pick up her daughter on her own, so she turned to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

• In October 2025, Melania Trump stated that she had an "open channel of communication" with Putin after he responded to her letter about Ukrainian children, written in August 2025.
• According to Bring Kids Back UA, to date, 2 470 children have been returned to Ukraine from the occupation, while another 1.6 million remain under the control of the Russian Federation. These children have either been deported, forcibly relocated to the Russian Federation, or are in temporarily occupied territory.

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