White House says Trump working to return missing, abducted Ukrainian children despite funding cut

President Trump told Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on a call Wednesday that he'll "work closely" with Ukraine and Russia to return Ukrainian children who are missing or abducted in the countries' war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said.

The effort will not be harmed by the U.S. cutting funding to investigations by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said, according to The Hill.

She said Trump "personally" addressed the issue with Zelensky, which "overrides any funding cuts to specific programs," in The Hill's paraphrase. It shows "we can still work on issues that matter and make them happen without it being in a certain structure that has existed."

Bruce derided the "conspiracy theory," cited by lawmakers who criticized the funding cut, that HRL's data had been lost for good and it no longer has access to satellite imagery to track abducted children's movements.