U.S. President Donald Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, raised the plight of children in Ukraine and Russia in a personal letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
President Trump hand-delivered the letter to Putin during their summit talks in Alaska on Friday, two White House officials told Reuters. Slovenian-born Melania Trump was not on the trip to Alaska.
The officials would not divulge the contents of the letter. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted a copy of it Saturday on X and praised the first lady for “calling for a world where children, regardless of where they are born, can live in peace.”
“Every child shares the same quiet dreams in their heart, whether born randomly into a nation’s rustic countryside or a magnificent city-center,” Melania Trump said in the copy of the letter, dated Aug. 15. “They dream of love, possibility, and safety from danger.”
Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian children has been a deeply sensitive one for Ukraine.
Ukraine has called the abductions of tens of thousands of its children taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without the consent of family or guardians a war crime that meets the U.N. treaty definition of genocide.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy conveyed his gratitude to the first lady on his call with Trump on Saturday, Ukraine’s foreign minister said.
“This is a true act of humanism,” Andrii Sybiha added on X.
Previously Moscow has said it has been protecting vulnerable children from a war zone.
The United Nations Human Rights Office has said Russia has inflicted suffering on millions of Ukrainian children and violated their rights since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Trump and Putin met for nearly three hours at a U.S. military base in Anchorage without reaching a ceasefire deal in the war in Ukraine.