Melania Trump appeals to Putin to protect children

First lady Melania Trump with President Donald Trump as they depart the White House in Washington, April 25, 2025. Melania Trump has sent a personal letter to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, imploring him as a fellow parent to protect the innocence of children. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)

By Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Melania Trump has sent a personal letter to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, imploring him as a fellow parent to protect the innocence of children.

The brief letter, a rare public outreach by the American first lady to a foreign leader, was dated Aug. 15 and appeared to be written on official notepaper. It did not mention a specific problem facing children or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has had a devastating impact on the country’s young people. President Donald Trump posted the letter on his Truth Social account Sunday.

“Every child shares the same quiet dreams in their heart, whether born randomly into a nation’s rustic countryside or a magnificent city center,” the letter began. “They dream of love, possibility and safety from danger.”

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

Melania Trump said that Putin could single-handedly restore the children’s “melodic laughter,” and appealed to him to do so. By protecting the innocence of children, which she said he could do with a stroke of a pen, the Russian leader would be serving all of humanity, the letter said.

There was no public comment from the Kremlin about Trump’s outreach to Putin, and the White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment about the letter.

At least 716 children were killed in territory controlled by Ukraine between the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 and June, and more than 2,000 others have been injured, according to a report by the U.N. Human Rights Office. It said that more than 730,000 children had been forced to flee to safer areas within Ukraine, and that a further 1.7 million were now refugees as a result of the war.

In addition, Russia has abducted tens of thousands of Ukrainian children during the conflict. In 2023, the International Criminal Court accused Putin of war crimes and issued a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of responsibility for the abductions and deportations of children. The State Department in March ended funding for a database that tracked the missing children.