As Trump pushes to end Ukraine-Russia war, Baumgartner says Russia must return kidnapped Ukrainian children

WASHINGTON – As President Donald Trump on Tuesday touted progress in talks to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine, an Eastern Washington lawmaker said any peace deal must protect U.S. interests in the region and include the return of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia.

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, said in an interview that he had concerns with the initial proposal first reported by Axios on Nov. 19, a 28-point plan that largely reflected Russia’s demands, including Ukraine giving up parts of its territory that Russia has seized since launching a full-scale invasion in 2022. With the negotiations ongoing, the congressman complimented Trump’s diplomatic approach and emphasized that an agreement to end the war should ensure that Ukraine can defend itself from future Russian aggression.

“While I have some concerns about the initial media reports,” Baumgartner said, “I think that President Trump deserves a lot of credit for his ongoing efforts, and that he’s also displayed a lot of strategic acumen in foreign policy in a number of complex engagements.”

In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump said the proposal had been “fine-tuned” after consulting with Ukrainian and European leaders over the weekend, and “there are only a few remaining points of disagreement.” Numerous news outlets have reported that the revised proposal reverses provisions in the initial plan that Ukraine and its European allies found unacceptable, including requirements that Ukraine give up its aspirations to join the NATO alliance and give up not only the territory Russia currently controls, but larger parts of the country’s east.

Baumgartner, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the return of thousands of Ukrainian children who have been taken into Russia by Kremlin troops “should be an essential part of any proposed peace agreement.” According to data published by the Ukrainian government’s Bring Kids Back platform, there have been nearly 20,000 reports of Ukrainian children forcibly taken from their country into Russia, where the Russian government is attempting to erase their Ukrainian identity, according to the International Criminal Court and research from Yale University.

The Spokane congressman has also been an advocate of Ukrainian refugees in Eastern Washington, whose legal status Trump says he has considered revoking. On Friday, Baumgartner became the 15th co-sponsor of bipartisan legislation that would give Ukrainians living in the United States with temporary legal status an opportunity to gain permanent citizenship.

Baumgartner lamented that the Ukraine-Russia conflict, which began when Russia invaded and annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014, has become “just so politically charged” in the United States. He cited Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, which stemmed from the U.S. president pressuring his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden.

“It would be better to look at the issue just in terms of first principles of American national security,” he said, adding that the U.S. government should ensure that Russia doesn’t emerge from the war “as a menacing, expansionist, threatening power to the West.”

“I think many members of Congress and the public that consumes American domestic news media has a challenge of digesting anything to do with the Russia and the war in Ukraine in a rational, analytical fashion. It’s just so politically charged.”

That doesn’t mean, Baumgartner said, that Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t “a nefarious character” who started the war and has done “terrible things in Ukraine,” he said – abducting Ukrainian children being at the top of the list.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Rusten Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said the U.S. and Ukrainian delegations that met in Switzerland over the weekend had “reached a common understanding on the core terms of the agreement.” But silence from Moscow on the new proposal has raised concerns that Russia’s government may reject the deal. Russia launched more deadly strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine’s capital early Tuesday, killing at least seven people and injuring 20 others, according to Kyiv’s mayor.