Melania Trump Reveals Months-Long Private Talks With Vladimir Putin Over Reuniting Ukrainian Children
First Lady Melania Trump has disclosed that she has maintained direct contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin for several months in a rare humanitarian effort between Washington and Moscow, aimed at reuniting Ukrainian children separated by the war with their families.
According to the First Lady, her behind-the-scenes diplomacy began last August when she sent a personal letter to President Putin. “He responded in writing, expressing a willingness to cooperate directly with me,” Mrs. Trump said on October 10. Since then, she added, the two sides have kept “an open channel of communication focused on the welfare of these children.”
Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Moscow has evacuated thousands of children from war zones to what it describes as safe areas while awaiting reunification. Kyiv, however, has accused Russia of “abducting” Ukrainian minors — an allegation Moscow denies.
Mrs. Trump said several meetings and private exchanges had taken place over the past three months “all conducted in good faith.” These efforts, she noted, led to the reunification of eight Ukrainian children with their families within the past 24 hours.
“Each of these children has lived through crisis,” she said. Three were separated from their parents amid fighting on the front lines and taken to Russia, while five others had been divided from relatives scattered across different countries. Among them, she added, was “a young girl who has just been reunited from Ukraine to Russia.”
The First Lady said her representatives worked directly with Putin’s team to facilitate the reunions, and that the Russian side provided full documentation — including personal histories, photographs, and reports on the children’s care. “The U.S. government has verified that the information in these files is accurate,” she added.
Mrs. Trump described her mission as one of “maximizing transparent, free exchange of health and welfare information” and “ensuring children can maintain regular contact with their families until all are safely home.”
“This is an ongoing effort,” she concluded. “Plans are already underway to bring more children back. I hope peace will come soon. Every good thing can begin with our children.”
Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, issued a statement of gratitude to the U.S. First Lady for her humanitarian initiative.
“I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the First Lady of the United States for her compassion and concern for families whose children have been affected by the military conflict,” Lvova-Belova said in a video message on October 10.
Melania Trump Threatens to Sue Hunter Biden for $1 Billion Over Epstein Claim
First Lady Melania Trump has threatened to sue Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, for more than $1 billion in damages after he claimed that she met Donald Trump through convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Melania Threatens Lawsuit, Hunter Stands Firm
The First Lady’s attorney, representing Mrs. Trump—who married Donald Trump in 2005—called Hunter Biden’s remarks “false, defamatory, malicious, and inflammatory.”
Hunter Biden made the statement earlier this month during an interview, and on Thursday (August 14), he doubled down, defending himself and showing no signs of backing down despite the First Lady’s legal threat.
Donald Trump had once been acquainted with Epstein but has long claimed he severed ties with him in the early 2000s after Epstein attempted to recruit staff from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort spa in Florida.
In a letter sent to Hunter Biden’s attorney, Mrs. Trump’s legal team demanded that he retract the statement and issue a public apology—or face a lawsuit seeking “over $1 billion in damages.”
According to the letter, Hunter Biden’s accusation caused Melania Trump “enormous financial and reputational harm.” The letter also accused Hunter of “habitually exploiting the names of others for personal gain” and of reviving this claim “to draw attention to himself.”
In an interview with filmmaker Andrew Callaghan in early August, Hunter Biden had said that unreleased documents related to Jeffrey Epstein would “implicate Donald Trump,” adding: “Epstein introduced Melania to Trump — that’s how deep their connection ran.”
Story Retracted, But Hunter Refuses to Apologize
The First Lady’s legal letter pointed out that part of Hunter’s claim stemmed from journalist Michael Wolff, author of several critical biographies about Donald Trump.
According to U.S. media reports, Wolff recently told The Daily Beast that Melania had known Epstein and one of Trump’s associates prior to meeting her husband.
However, The Daily Beast later retracted the story after receiving a letter from Melania Trump’s lawyers challenging its accuracy and framing.
When asked on Andrew Callaghan’s Channel 5 YouTube program whether he intended to apologize to Mrs. Trump, Hunter Biden replied, “No!”
In the interview, which aired on Thursday (August 14), Hunter dismissed the lawsuit threat as “nothing more than a distraction tactic,” but added that if the case went to court, he would welcome the opportunity to question the Trumps under oath — “something I’d be more than happy to make happen,” he said.
No evidence has ever surfaced suggesting that Donald and Melania Trump met through Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
In the First Lady’s legal correspondence, Hunter Biden was accused of relying on a now-deleted Daily Beast article to support his claim, which Melania’s team called “false and defamatory.”
An archived note on The Daily Beast’s website reads: “After publication, The Daily Beast received a letter from Melania Trump’s attorney challenging the story’s headline and content. Upon review, the article was removed, and we apologize for any confusion or misunderstanding it may have caused.”
When asked for comment about the lawsuit threat, Melania Trump’s attorney Alejandro Brito shared a statement from her aide, Nick Clemens, who said: “The First Lady’s legal counsel is working to ensure that those who spread malicious lies and defamation retract their statements immediately and issue public apologies.”
In a Harper’s Bazaar profile published in January 2016, Melania recounted that she first met Donald Trump in November 1998 at a party hosted by the founder of a modeling agency.
At the time, Melania, then 28, said she refused to give Trump her phone number because she was dating someone else. The article also noted that Trump was separated from his second wife, Marla Maples, and finalized their divorce in 1999. He had previously been married to his first wife, Ivana Trump, from 1977 to 1990.
Melania Trump says she has an ‘open channel’ to Putin on Ukrainian children, and some have been reunited with family
First lady Melania Trump said Friday that Russia has allowed eight Ukrainian children to reunite with their parents, following months of private discussions between Russian officials and the first lady’s office centered on children separated from their families during the war.
The first lady revealed that she and Russian President Vladimir Putin have had an “open channel” of communication since she wrote him a letter in August about the impact of the war in Ukraine on kids. She said the eight children were all returned to their families over the last 24 hours, with a commitment that the two sides will continue to work toward reunifying additional children displaced as part of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“This remains an ongoing effort,” Melania Trump said in a brief speech at the White House. “Plans are already underway to reunify more children in the immediate future. I hope peace will come soon. It can begin with our children.”
The first lady’s announcement comes as the Trump administration, however, has cut funding to a leading organization that tracks evidence of Russian war crimes, including the forced relocation of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children.
The Ukraine Conflict Observatory was run by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab and established with State Department backing in 2022 “to capture, analyze, and make widely available evidence of Russia-perpetrated war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine.”
The group produced reports on a slew of alleged Russian war crimes, including the extent of Moscow’s efforts to relocate, re-educate, and sometimes militarily train or forcibly adopt out Ukrainian children.
Their database included the information and identities of over 30,000 Ukrainian children who were allegedly abducted by Russia across 100 locations, according to a source familiar with the data.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin for the alleged war crime of forcibly deporting Ukrainian children.
As CNN reported in March, the administration terminated financial support for the Ukraine Conflict Observatory. Funding was temporarily restored later that month to allow the repository of evidence on the alleged Russian war crimes to be sent to the European Union’s law enforcement agency, Europol.
In June, a group of lawmakers called on the State Department to disburse approximately $8 million that the agency told Congress in late 2024 would be used to support the Ukraine Conflict Observatory’s work. Two congressional aides said at the time that to their knowledge, the funding has not been disbursed.
The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab has raised enough money through private donations to continue their work until January 1, their executive director said, but they don’t know what will happen after that.
‘Open channel of communication’ with Putin
President Donald Trump hand-delivered a “peace” letter on behalf of the first lady to Putin in August. The letter did not specifically reference the thousands of Ukrainian children who have allegedly been abducted by Russia since the war began, but urged Putin to consider the impact the conflict was having on children in general.
Putin responded to Melania Trump in writing, the first lady said Friday, offering details about the Ukrainian children in Russia and offering to talk directly about the issue.
“Since then, President Putin and I have had an open channel of communication regarding the welfare of these children,” Melania Trump said. “We have agreed to cooperate with each other for the benefit of all people involved in this war.”
In addition to releasing the eight children, Melania Trump said that Russian officials have provided updates on the identities of some children and the social and medical services that they’re receiving. She added that she’s also pressed the country over those Ukrainians who were minors when the war started, but are now adults and still residing in Russia. Russian officials have agreed to work toward rejoining those adults in the near future, Melania Trump said.
“My ongoing mission is twofold: To optimize a transparent free-flow exchange of health-related information surrounding all children who have (fallen) victim to this war,” Trump said, “and to facilitate the regular reunification of children with their families until each individual returns home.”
In a social media post Saturday, Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said that his country is “deeply grateful” to the first lady for her “compassion and genuine involvement in the effort to bring Ukrainian children back home.”
“Yet there is still so much work ahead. Every day, Russia’s war takes more innocent lives,” he said, naming seven-year-old Makar Dorosh, who was killed in an airstrike in Zaporizhzhia on Friday, as an example of this.
“Thousands of others remain in danger: deported, trafficked, indoctrinated, stripped of their identity, or forced to live under constant threat of attack — all robbed of their childhoods,” he said.
“Russia is the architect of this tragedy. And it must bear full responsibility for every life taken, every child stolen, and every childhood destroyed,” Yermak added.
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