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Melania Trump, the wife of United States President Donald Trump, has revealed that she was involved in negotiations with the Russian government to return eight children displaced during its invasion of Ukraine.

In a short, six-minute speech from the White House on Friday, the US first lady explained she has developed an “open channel of communication” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and they have been discussing the return of the children.

“My representative has been working directly with President Putin’s team to ensure the safe reunification of children with their families between Russia and Ukraine,” she said. “In fact, eight children have been rejoined with their families during the past 24 hours.”

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, the country has engaged in the forcible deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children.

Some end up in re-education or military training facilities. Others are adopted into Russian families. Very few have returned home to their families in Ukraine.

According to the Ukrainian government, a total of 19,546 children have been deported to Russia. Only 1,605 have come back.

The mass abduction has resulted in criminal charges against Putin at the International Criminal Court. In March 2023, the court issued an arrest warrant for Putin, on the grounds that the “unlawful deportation” of children would constitute a war crime, as well as a violation of the Rome Statute.

While Russia is not party to the Rome Statute — the court’s founding document — Ukraine is.

A Kremlin spokesperson has called the arrest warrant “outrageous and unacceptable” and emphasised it does not recognise the authority of the court. Russia has also repeatedly denied abducting Ukrainian children.

Praise for ‘good faith’ meetings

In Friday’s remarks, Melania Trump was careful not to raise the arrest warrant nor the human rights issues involved in the mass abduction of children. She also avoided pointing a finger at Russia.

Instead, she spoke in sweeping statements, starting her speech with the sentiment, “ A child’s soul knows no borders, no flags.”

She also expressed appreciation for Russia’s willingness to participate in back-channel meetings and calls “in good faith”.

“ I have learned a lot about this matter during the past three months,” Trump said. “Russia has demonstrated a willingness to disclose objective and detailed information reflective for the current situation.”

Each of the eight children returned over the last 24 hours were identified in a “ detailed report”, Trump explained, which detailed their circumstances and their biographies.

She also highlighted that Russia had provided documents to attest to the “social, medical and psychological services afforded to the Ukrainian children”.

But her remarks indicated that at least one of the children involved in the swap was a Russian minor displaced by fighting.

“Each child has lived in turmoil because of the war in Ukraine,” the first lady said.

“Three were separated from their parents and displaced to the Russian Federation because of front-line fighting. The other five were separated from family members across borders because of the conflict, including one young girl who has now been reunited from Ukraine to Russia.”

A follow-up to the Alaska summit

Friday’s brief speech comes nearly three months after Melania’s husband, Donald Trump, met with Putin in Alaska on August 15.

That summit disappointed expectations that US President Trump and Putin might make progress towards achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine. It was Putin’s first visit to US soil since 2015, and critics accused the Russian leader of leveraging the meeting to highlight his toasty relationship with Trump, who greeted him with a red carpet and a shared ride in the presidential limousine.

While at the summit, however, President Trump did pass along a letter from First Lady Melania Trump, appealing to Putin to bear in mind the suffering of children during the Ukraine war.

As with her Friday remarks, that letter declined to highlight the mass abduction of Ukrainian youths, opting instead for broad sentiments.

Nowhere is the concept of war or the nationality of the children in question raised.

“In today’s world, some children are forced to carry a quiet laughter, untouched by the darkness around them — a silent defiance against the forces that can potentially claim their future,” Melania Trump wrote.

“Mr Putin, you can singlehandedly restore their melodic laughter. In protecting the innocence of these children, you will do more than serve Russia alone — you serve humanity itself.”

Since taking office as president for a second term, Donald Trump has attempted to pressure Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to end the war in Ukraine. But so far, a ceasefire has remained elusive.

Ukraine’s campaign

Throughout the war, Ukraine has led a campaign to seek the return of forcibly removed children. On social media this week, Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential office in Ukraine, offered one of his regular updates on those efforts.

A group of 23 Ukrainian children, Yermak said, had been “rescued” from Russian-occupied territories. He described how one family — a mother and daughter — had their government documents taken away, in an effort to limit their ability to escape.

“Two sisters, aged 11 and 14, were forced by the occupiers to attend a Russian school, with their mother threatened that the children would be taken away if she refused,” Yermak wrote.

“One teenage boy was left without guardianship after the occupation and was coerced into obtaining a Russian passport, yet he refused to attend a Russian school out of principle.”

Last month, the Yale School of Public Health issued a 28-page report outlining where some of the “stolen” Ukrainian children ended up. It found that 210 facilities had been set up to host the children, ranging from summer camps to orphanages to a military base.

More than 61 percent of the facilities, it said, imposed “re-education” programmes on the children to expose them to pro-Russia narratives. More than 18 percent of the facilities, meanwhile, are believed to house “militarisation” programmes, some of which involve military training and the production of military equipment like drones.

“The impact of the alleged crimes perpetuated by the Russian government are likely to leave generational scars,” the report concludes.

The Geneva Convention and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child both include protections for minors during conflict. More than 737,000 children have been internally displaced in Ukraine as of last year, and more than 1.7 million are considered refugees.

Al-Mawasi, Gaza Strip – In the windswept sands of al-Mawasi, where tents stretch as far as the eye can see, Hanaa Abu Ismail, 42, knelt to clear a patch of ground for her fire and smiled.

For the first time in more than six months, since Israel unilaterally broke the last Gaza ceasefire, the constant hum of war had stopped.

“No more despair,” she said, her voice rising above the hum of the displacement camp. “We want joy, we want to raise our voices – the war is over, and God willing, we’ll go home again.”

The ceasefire, which officially began on Friday, has brought an unfamiliar stillness to Gaza. The drones have been relatively silent, the sky free of warplanes. For Hanaa and the hundreds of thousands crammed into al-Mawasi, a narrow coastal strip between Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis that has become Gaza’s largest displacement camp, there is now a faint and uncertain glimpse of what calm might look like.

The ceasefire was announced in the aftermath of negotiations held earlier this week in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, attended by mediators from Qatar, Turkiye, and the United States. The agreement, based on a 20-point plan announced by US President Donald Trump in late September, ended 24 months of constant Israeli bombardment that killed more than 67,190 Palestinians and displaced an estimated 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents.

Hanaa sat on the packed earth beside her tent, clapping along to an old Palestinian folk tune. The war, she says, has scattered her family at least 15 times in two years. Yet on this first day of the ceasefire, she felt peaceful.

“I spent my morning in calm,” she told Al Jazeera. “I kneaded the dough, baked bread, and now I’m preparing the coals. We’ll enjoy ourselves despite the wounds. If we’re still alive, then we’ve already won.”

However, for many, the joy brought by the ceasefire news was tempered by doubt, as many waited to see whether the promised aid and reconstruction would ever reach their tents.

Omar al-Dadda clutched his youngest son against his chest, the five-year-old’s sobs finally subsiding after more than half an hour of crying. The food promised from a nearby soup kitchen had been delayed again – another two hours, they were told, after supplies ran out and volunteers had to cook a fresh batch.

“It’s been a few hours now, and nothing has changed,” Omar told Al Jazeera, adjusting his grip on Rayan, his son, with his one remaining arm, his left hand lost to an agricultural accident in 2015. “It’s still the same. My children queue at the soup kitchen, fetch drinking water, and I search for any help from relief committees.”

For now, the only certainty is the struggle to make it through another day.

‘The last cruel days’

According to the United Nations, al-Mawasi’s population has more than tripled, from about 115,000 in mid-March to roughly 425,000 by June, nearly all living in makeshift tents patched together from wood and plastic sheeting.

Since then, the camp’s population has continued to surge, driven by new displacement orders and the flight of nearly 200,000 people from Gaza City after Israel’s ground operation in September.

Omar sat on a worn mattress outside his makeshift shelter, donated to him five months ago when he fled east Khan Younis. Around him, his four other children – Anas, 12, Minas, 10, Hamoudah, 8, and Sidra, 6 – attempted to settle a dispute over fetching water from a truck parked 200 metres (660 feet) from the tent.

Despite his disability, Omar hoisted several water jerrycans to help his children, hoping to fill a small barrel before the truck moved on or ran dry. His wife, Ibtissam, busied herself cleaning kitchen utensils and arranging bedding she had placed in the sun to dry after the morning’s fog had dampened them.

“What pains me is seeing my children, instead of going to nearby schools, learning, drawing, spending their days searching for water and food,” he said. “This is unbearably harsh on them. They cry daily from the hardship of this life.”

Under the ceasefire’s first phase, Israeli forces say they have pulled back from populated areas, including Gaza City and Khan Younis. Withdrawal was timed to facilitate Hamas’s preparation of 20 living hostages for release, expected by Monday, according to Trump. Israel has agreed to free 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences, 1,700 others from Gaza detained since the war began, and all children and women in detention.

Crossing points are also set to open now that the ceasefire has begun, with 400 trucks entering on the first day and 600 trucks expected daily in later stages. International aid agencies, rather than the GHF – a US- and Israel-backed organisation established in early 2025 that has been criticised for lacking neutrality and operating under Israeli military oversight – would oversee distribution, and the road to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt would reopen.

Yet those mechanisms have not yet translated into tangible relief for families like Omar’s. While he remains hopeful that the aid will reach those most in need, he knows that real change may take months to materialise.

“I just want to escape this reality and start a new life,” he said. “We hope today is the last of the cruel days before our lives gradually change as the ceasefire agreement is implemented.”

But others like Hanaa are more hopeful.

Hanaa’s laughter rose as she pulled her four-year-old daughter, Sila, into her lap, while her only grandchild, Mohammad, toddled nearby.

“For them,” she said softly, “we have to smile, to build something new. The agreement means safety … and once we have that, we can think about everything else.”

Hanaa added that she’s desperate to return to her home in Abasan, east of Khan Younis, even if it means pitching a tent over the rubble.

“We just want to be close to what was ours,” she said. “To feel that life is starting again.”

Debating the return

Several kilometres south in central al-Mawasi, Essa Said, 55, spent Friday in long discussions about his family’s next move, whether to remain in their tent and prepare for winter by reinforcing it with more tarpaulin, or to return to their destroyed home in al-Rabouat area of eastern Khan Younis.

Residents say that the neighbourhood falls within zones where return would be permitted once the ceasefire takes effect. But Essa and his wife, Amal, 49, harbour deep concerns about the ceasefire’s durability.

“We repaired part of our partially destroyed house before, only to have it completely demolished by shelling two months ago,” Essa explained. His family, including two sons, Mohammed and Ahmed, who worked as doctors, plus four daughters, two of whom were still in school, have debated the risks of investing effort into another return only to face renewed displacement.

“The ceasefire is a precious opportunity to restore our lives and begin planning anew,” he told Al Jazeera. “But our choices are limited … stay here under very harsh conditions, or return to areas that may be even more dangerous, because everything is destroyed with no water sources, roads or services.”

The family have ultimately decided to return, but will wait several days to assess conditions.

“We’ll be cautious for a few days or more to understand the landscape.”

As his wife prepared food and their four daughters helped with cooking, Essa seized the opportunity to purchase traditional winter sweets called halaweh and awameh, calling to his wife by her kunyah (Arabic honourific) over the firewood flame: “Um Ahmed, relief is near, God willing. We’ll stop using firewood, and you’ll cook with gas. They say cooking gas trucks will enter soon.”

Neither Essa nor Amal had slept the night before, overcome by joy.

“My wife cried several times, we embraced each other, and neighbouring tents came to congratulate one another,” Essa recounted. “It’s like Eid, or more than that. We haven’t felt this happiness before.”

The couple’s youngest daughter, Rahaf, spent the morning at a nearby field school for two hours before returning to review her lessons, then carried dough with her sister Lian to a clay oven for baking.

“We’re so happy about the ceasefire,” Rahaf said. “We want to return to schools, to our neighbourhood, to gather again with neighbours from before the war. We’ve had enough war. We want peace.”

What comes next

Trump has said that Gaza will be rebuilt, though he has offered few details.

For his part, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pledged his organisation would “scale up the delivery of sustained and principled humanitarian relief” and advance “recovery and reconstruction efforts”.

Omar expressed hope that there would be improvements to Gaza beyond the immediate aid concerns. “I want open roads, water network extensions, caravans and mobile homes, lighting and electricity,” he said. “These needs are urgent, very urgent, and they’re what will change our lives.”

Essa’s goals are more immediate.

“We hope there will be continuous water sources, aid distribution, lower prices for vegetables and fruit, and entry of meat and all other needs that will change our lives.”

Both men acknowledged the precariousness of the moment – the uncertainty of whether the ceasefire would hold beyond its initial phases, whether promises would materialise into policy, and whether the silence overhead would last.

But as Friday drew to a close, Hanaa, sitting with her family, was looking positively to the future. “We’re tired of smoke and ash,” she said. “We want our old lives back, or at least something like them.”

Russian drone and missile strikes have wounded at least 20 people in Kyiv, damaged residential buildings and caused blackouts across swaths of Ukraine, authorities have said.

In the latest mass attack targeting the energy system as winter approaches, electricity was interrupted in nine regions, and more than a million households and businesses were temporarily without power across the country on Friday.

In southeastern Ukraine, a seven-year-old was killed when his home was hit, and at least 20 people were injured. In Kyiv, an apartment block in the city centre was damaged by a projectile, while on the left bank of the Dnipro River that divides the capital, crowds waited at bus stops with the metro out of action, and people filled water bottles at distribution points.

“We didn’t sleep at all,” said Liuba, a pensioner, as she collected water. “From 2:30am, there was so much noise. By 3:30, we had no electricity, no gas, no water. Nothing.”

According to Ukraine’s energy ministry, more than 800,000 customers temporarily lost power in Kyiv.

Moscow’s attack overnight and into Friday fell on the third anniversary of Russia’s first large-scale attack on energy facilities, months after Moscow invaded in February 2022, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Russia’s latest strikes a “cynical and calculated attack”, and urged allies to respond with concrete measures.

“What’s needed is not window dressing but decisive action – from the United States, Europe, and the G7 – in delivering air defence systems and enforcing sanctions,” he said in a statement on X.

The Kremlin has escalated aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities and rail systems over recent weeks, building on earlier bombing campaigns over the previous three winters that left millions without heating in frigid temperatures. Russia said its forces had hit energy sites supplying power to Ukraine’s defence industry.

The Ukrainian air force said the Russian barrage comprised 465 drones and 32 missiles, adding that 405 drones and 15 missiles were downed.

A source in Ukraine’s energy sector told the AFP news agency that the intensity of attacks was higher compared to last year, and that cloudy weather overnight had allowed drones to evade Ukrainian air defence systems.

Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Russian forces had targeted “critical infrastructure”.

“This was one of the largest concentrated strikes against energy facilities,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.

It was the fourth attack in a week against the facilities of Ukraine’s biggest private electricity provider, DTEK, its CEO Maxim Timchenko said.

Late on Friday DTEK said it had restored power to at least 678,000 households and companies in Kyiv after the massive Russian aerial attack.

“DTEK power engineers continue to intensively restore electricity to Kyiv residents,” the company said on Telegram.

Children ‘rejoined’ with families

The Russian attack came as United States First Lady Melania Trump announced that eight children displaced by the war had been reunited with their families following negotiations between her team and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s.

Trump said that Putin had responded to a letter sent via her husband, President Donald Trump, at a summit in Alaska in August.

“My representative has been working directly with President Putin’s team to ensure the safe reunification of children with their families between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, eight children have been rejoined with their families during the past 24 hours,” she said in a short, six-minute speech from the White House on Friday.

US President Trump’s own efforts to broker an end to Russia’s three-year war in Ukraine have stalled, as a series of direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations this year ended.

Trump said on Thursday that Washington and NATO allies were “stepping up the pressure” to end the war in Ukraine.