Melania Trump’s senior adviser has made the stunning claim that the US first lady has a “direct line” to Russia’s leadership.

In an appearance on the Scott Jennings Podcast this week, Marc Beckman talked up Trump’s efforts to reunite children with their families during Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Beckman told the conservative CNN commentator that Trump should be recognised formally or receive an award for her work.

“This is an incredible situation, Scott. I actually believe that the first lady deserves some level of formal recognition for what she’s done here,” he said.

In August, Trump said she had “facilitated” the reunification of 34 children and their parents since the summer of 2025, when her husband, US President Donald Trump, hand-delivered a letter from her to Russian leader Vladimir Putin about the cause.

Ukrainian authorities say almost 20,000 children have been moved from Ukraine to Russia since the war began.

“Thirty-four children have been reunited as a result of being displaced from the Ukraine-Russia war, and this has occurred now across six different events – six different moments in time,” Beckman said.

Trump, 56, “leads all of these negotiations”, and “has a direct line with leadership at both Russia and Ukraine”, he said.

Beckman said the first lady was “extremely private” and didn’t share clips of the reunifications.

“But we have access to it, and we see it,” he said. “We respect everybody’s privacy, and it’s a very emotional situation, as you can imagine.”

“I wonder if anybody out there is going to formally recognise this work with some sort of an award or something because it really is incredible,” he concluded.

In March, a United Nations commission found that more than 1200 children had been deported or forcibly transferred to Russia or to Russian-occupied Ukraine since the lead-up to Russia’s invasion  in February 2022.

It said Russian authorities had failed to return 80 per cent of those children as of March, calling their retention a crime against humanity.

“Russian authorities have systematically failed to disclose the whereabouts of the children to parents or legal guardians and have kept children in a coercive environment making their return to families almost impossible,” the UN said in a statement at the time.