War crimes investigators working to document alleged Russian atrocities in Ukraine are struggling to continue their work after losing millions in American funding, hampering efforts to seek justice for victims of the conflict.
Roksolana Makar, who investigates war crimes for a Ukrainian nonprofit, recently traveled dangerous roads under threat of drone strikes to interview a 55-year-old woman named Alla in the town of Izium. The woman described being held for 10 days at a battery plant during the 2022 Russian occupation, where she said soldiers beat her, used electrical shocks, suffocated her with a gas mask and sexually assaulted her.
“I asked them to kill me because I couldn’t take it anymore,” Alla told Makar, requesting to be identified only by her first name.
Makar’s organization, Truth Hounds, is among dozens that have lost American financial support after the current administration cut tens of millions of dollars in overseas development aid to advance an “America first” agenda. Ukraine received the largest share of these cuts, according to government officials.
“There’s less hope” for accountability, Makar said following her interview with Alla in January.
The cuts represent a significant shift from America’s historical role in supporting international justice efforts dating back to the Nuremberg trials. Reuters could not independently verify Alla’s account, and Russian officials have repeatedly denied war crime allegations, calling them Western propaganda.
Ukrainian prosecutors have opened more than 230,000 war crimes cases since Russia’s 2022 invasion, including allegations of targeting civilians, abducting children, torture and sexual violence.
Beth Van Schaack, who served as ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice under the previous administration, warned the funding reductions “could lead to a lot of victims being denied justice.”
The State Department said America is shifting financial responsibility to Europe and other “willing partners” while still providing substantial assistance to Ukraine, including programs for “war crimes, justice and accountability for atrocities.”
Reuters interviewed more than 40 people involved in the American-supported network investigating Ukraine war crimes. Nearly all reported their efforts have been curtailed due to funding cuts.
Truth Hounds was forced to lay off staff, suspend an evidence archiving project and postpone international law training for judges and prosecutors. Dozens of foreign experts who helped collect and analyze battlefield evidence can no longer travel to Ukraine after reduced State Department support, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Plans to rebuild a war-damaged courthouse were halted after the administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and terminated a $62-million program to strengthen Ukraine’s justice system.
Even at peak funding levels under the previous administration, Ukrainian prosecutors were overwhelmed by the caseload. They had secured 252 war crimes convictions as of April 1, while identifying 1,175 suspects and indicting 842.
High-ranking suspects could face trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which has sought the arrest of President Vladimir Putin. Cases are also being pursued in American and European courts.
Reuters tracked more than $283 million in American funding earmarked for Ukraine war crimes initiatives since 2022. The news organization found that programs accounting for at least 40% of this spending were terminated or allowed to expire.
A senior Ukrainian source said the cuts affect approximately half the country’s American-funded projects promoting war crimes accountability and rule of law.
The administration has launched one new program, announcing up to $25 million in March to support the return of missing Ukrainian children, a cause championed by first lady Melania Trump. Recipients have not yet been announced.
This new grant followed cuts to other programs serving the same purpose, including a Yale University initiative that has tracked thousands of missing Ukrainian children to sites in Russia and Russian-occupied territory.
The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab will exhaust its funding in August after the State Department withheld about $8 million, executive director Nathaniel Raymond told Reuters.
Truth Hounds has been tracking war crimes suspects since 2014, when Russian forces seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. The organization has documented approximately 17,000 war crimes allegations across Ukraine, according to co-executive director Dmytro Koval.
“Some important lines of inquiry will not be opened at all,” Koval said after losing American funding that covered one-third of the organization’s budget since 2023.
The cuts reflect a broader American withdrawal from human rights work. The current administration closed a State Department office that had coordinated global responses to mass atrocities since 1997, disbanded a Justice Department team helping Ukraine prosecute war crimes, and withdrew from a multinational group building cases against Russian leaders.
The administration also imposed sanctions on International Criminal Court officials over attempts to investigate alleged crimes by Israeli leaders in Gaza and American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Other major donors, including the European Union and Britain, say they remain committed to delivering justice for Ukraine. But the lost American aid won’t be easily replaced, said Wayne Jordash, deputy lead of an Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group established by the U.S., EU and Britain to support Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office.
The State Department stopped funding two out of three core organizations in the initiative last year, including Jordash’s international law foundation, Global Rights Compliance, according to a recent department audit.
For Yuliia Usenko, Ukraine’s lead prosecutor for crimes against children, Yale’s digital investigations have been “invaluable.” Most alleged crime scenes are in Russian-occupied territory or Russia, where Ukrainian investigators cannot access.
Yale researchers use satellite imagery, Russian social media posts and other open sources to track children taken to more than 200 sites they say are part of a vast Russian reeducation and militarization network. Some were later placed in Russian foster care or adopted.
“We want to show Russia’s true intent is not just to seize a piece of Ukraine’s territory, but much more: to destroy our nation and assimilate it into Russian society,” Usenko said.
Ukrainian authorities accuse Russia of more than 20,500 child deportations or forced transfers and say just over 2,000 children have been returned. Yale researchers estimate 35,000 may have been taken.
Russia denies abducting Ukrainian children, saying it evacuated them from conflict zones for their safety. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters that in June 2025, Kyiv provided Moscow with a list of 339 children it said ended up in Russia.
Aid groups like the Emile Foundation use Yale’s findings to help reunite children with their families. “Without it, we are talking about many years of setbacks,” said Mariam Lambert, co-founder of the Netherlands-based foundation.
Hanna Zamyshliaieva last saw her son, Anton Volkovych, on January 14, 2022, when she visited him at a boarding school for children with special needs in Oleshky. The 19-year-old required constant care due to a neurological disorder.
When Russian forces occupied the town in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region that February, Zamyshliaieva kept in touch with the school by phone. But over the following months, students and some staff were transferred to locations deeper inside Russian-occupied territory, where she could not reach them.
Of the 87 pupils at Oleshky before the occupation, 13 have returned, Lambert said. Her foundation received a tip about Volkovych’s whereabouts in March, but there has been no confirmation from Russia.
“I just want to hold him,” Zamyshliaieva said, grappling with uncertainty over whether her son has survived without the intensive care he received at school.
Tetiana Popovych spent years searching for her son, Vladyslav, who was 29 when he disappeared during Russia’s occupation of Bucha, near Kyiv, early in the war. She retraced his steps with help from neighbors and returning prisoners of war.
Witnesses told her they saw Vladyslav hiding in her walnut orchard during an artillery barrage, and that someone bandaged his gunshot wounds before Russian forces captured and beat them. A released prisoner told her they shared a detention cell in the Russian town of Vyazma, where she believes he remains.
“For me it is important that everyone is punished, that everyone is found, no matter how many years have passed,” Popovych said. “I will fight for this until the end.”
