Rash: Klobuchar meets Pope Leo to fight for Ukraine’s kidnapped kids

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U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has crossed the aisle and continents to rally support for Ukraine.

The Minnesota Democrat has met with Western leaders to shore up allied efforts for the invaded nation. She’s urgently advocated for the more than 19,000 Ukrainian kids Russia has kidnapped since its invasion, notably by being the author of the bipartisan Abducted Ukrainian Children Recovery and Accountability Act. And last Friday she traveled with a Ukrainian delegation to the Vatican, where they met with Pope Leo XIV to discuss the children’s plight.

And all along her work in Washington and Europe, she’s been mindful of Minnesota’s significant Ukrainian community.

Klobuchar’s bill, part of the National Defense Authorization Act that’s been approved by the Senate but not yet the House, has among its provisions technology and expertise to investigate and track the missing kids; rehabilitation support for children once they’ve been reunited with their Ukrainian families, and support for Ukrainian prosecutors who are rightly building war-crimes cases against the culprits.

Citing several sound reasons for standing up for Ukraine’s — and by extension our — security and democracy, Klobuchar, speaking from Rome, told reporters that “they’re all really good reasons to care about this, but for me, it really comes down to the heart from our own Ukrainian-American community.”

(The senator also thanked the pope for his compassion regarding the victims of August’s Annunciation Church and School shooting in Minneapolis and presented him with a copy of the Senate resolution honoring the victims.)

The delegation included four of the around 1,800 Ukrainian children who have been returned to their homeland from abductors who often sought to erase their Ukrainian identity. Klobuchar, along with her bill’s co-sponsor, Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, rightfully insist that all Ukrainian kids be reunited with their families. They amplified Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call that the Vatican formalize its role in helping facilitate negotiations to accomplish that objective.

The senator said she told the pontiff that “I don’t think these kids should be pawns in some kind of negotiation.” Rather, she said, the kids should be returned first. “Otherwise, in every conflict, people will just kidnap kids and make that a part of the deal for reaching an agreement.”

That stance is shared by Doan, who added that “no sustainable peace can be reached until every abducted Ukrainian child is returned home and reunited with their family. This is a moral issue, a human issue and a peace-building issue — and her presence at the Vatican underscored that urgently.”

Sustainable peace, of course, is Ukraine’s and the West’s objective and is the focus of intensified diplomacy after an initial peace plan hatched between the Trump administration and the Kremlin — without initial Ukrainian and European involvement — was first introduced with a Thursday deadline for Kyiv to agree.

Klobuchar continued that it was unclear to her how a peace agreement could work without, as Europe has offered, some kind of peacekeeping forces on the border. Because, she said, after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s initial invasion of Crimea, “he did it again and he will do it again unless there’s some very, very major consequences, including having some kind of peacekeeping forces, even if they’re not official NATO forces.”

The moral force of the pope is indeed necessary and welcome on the issue of abducted Ukrainian children, and Klobuchar said that Leo “talked about his empathy and concern about the remaining kids that haven’t been returned.” Beyond the pontifical audience, Klobuchar met with the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See and Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, whose roles include being the pope’s envoy for peace in Ukraine. Remarking on what a Vatican reporter described as Leo’s “revolution of kindness” to the world, Klobuchar said that “watching him interact with these Ukrainian families certainly was a testament to that.”

All Ukrainian families whose children have been taken deserve to be reunited. But because no one expects a revolution of kindness from Putin, global pressure from political and religious leaders like Leo is needed to help speed the return and to hold those responsible accountable.