ANCHORAGE, Alaska: US 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, two White House officials said on Friday.
President Trump hand-delivered the letter to Putin during their summit talks in Alaska, the officials told Reuters. Slovenian-born Melania Trump was not on the trip to Alaska.
The officials would not divulge the contents of the letter other than to say it mentioned the abductions of children resulting from the war in Ukraine.
The existence of the letter was not previously reported.
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 UN treaty definition of genocide.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky 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 US military base in Anchorage without reaching a ceasefire deal in the war in Ukraine.
Melania Trump sends letter to Putin about abducted children
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Melania Trump sends letter to Putin about abducted children
- President Trump hand-delivered the letter to Putin during their summit talks in Alaska, the officials told Reuters
Pakistani Taliban kill six soldiers in checkpoint attack
- Pakistan has faced a surge in militant attacks along its border regions since the Taliban authorities retook control in Kabul in 2021
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Pakistani Taliban militants stormed a security checkpoint in Pakistan’s northwestern border area with Afghanistan, killing six soldiers and wounding four others, a government official said Tuesday.
Pakistan has faced a surge in militant attacks along its border regions since the Taliban authorities retook control in Kabul in 2021.
It accuses Afghanistan of harboring the insurgents, a claim the Taliban government denies.
Late Monday, more than a dozen armed men attacked the checkpoint, leading to a heavy exchange of fire in Kurram, a tribal district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Six security personnel were martyred and four were injured, while two militants were also killed in the fighting,” the government official posted in Kurram, who was not authorized to speak to the media, told AFP on the condition of anonymity.
The Pakistani Taliban group, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has long been active in the region, and claimed responsibility for the attack.
Pakistan accuses the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan of sheltering TTP militants and allowing them to launch cross-border attacks from there — a charge Kabul denies.
The border between the two countries has been closed since the clashes in October, though Pakistan said last week it would allow UN aid supplies to pass to Afghanistan soon.
The attack comes days after an exchange of gunfire and shelling between Afghan and Pakistani forces at a major border crossing that killed four civilians and one soldier, according to Afghanistan.
Each side accused the other of starting the fighting.
