Priest who prayed for Trump at Butler rally begs prez to help return kidnapped Ukrainian children

The priest who prayed over President Trump moments before his near-assassination in Butler, Pa. last year is pleading with the commander in chief to be a “shield” for thousands of kidnapped Ukrainian children held in Russia.

“On July 13, 2024, I led the invocation at your rally in Butler, Pennsylvania,” Father Jason Charron began a letter addressed to Trump and obtained by The Post.

“Our collective prayers were a shield for you — a shield that called on God to protect you from the assassin’s bullets,” continued Charron, the pastor of Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church in Carnegie, Pa., southwest of Pittsburgh and a father of seven children.

“Mr. President, I call on you to be a shield for the Ukrainian people and for tens of thousands of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia,” he wrote.

Charron, after his opening benediction in Butler, told audience members they need to keep Trump in their prayers in case of an assassination attempt.

Minutes later, gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to take Trump’s life and shot eight rounds into the audience.

“You were saved by God for a reason,” Charron’s letter to Trump reads. “You have the opportunity to save tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and play a historic role in returning them to their families.”

Russia has taken over 19,000 Ukrainian children into Moscow’s territory over the course of the three-year war, according to Ukrainian estimates.

Reports indicate some of the children are sent to military boot training camps, while others are sent to “re-education” camps away from their families.

The United Nations has characterized Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children as amounting to a “war crime” and has called on Kremlin tyrant Vladimir Putin to release the children back to their parents.

Charron told The Post that while the Trump administration is focused on “money” and other assets in their negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, it’s important to not forget the missing children.

“There’s a lot of talk about money, about rare-earth mineral resources. But no one is talking about Ukraine’s resources, which are its children. No one is advocating that this resource be put at the front of a negotiated peace,” he said.

Trump remarked about the possibility of talking to Putin about the kidnapped children in a future conversation during a radio interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade last week.

“I believe I could, yes. I didn’t know too much about it,” the president said.

“I was hearing about it yesterday. It’s pretty tough stuff, but I believe I could do that.”

Charron, in his letter, asks Trump to not accept a peace agreement that “surrenders” the children to “Russia’s wicked designs.”

“And please ask yourself — if Russia’s only goal was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, why kidnap so many children? Why castrate Ukrainian POWs? I assure you, Mr. President, that Russia’s designs are far more sinister than preventing Ukraine from joining a geopolitical alliance: it is the destruction of an entire people for daring to look at the West.”

“A nation that rapes women and bombs maternity wards can not be trusted with the children it has stolen,” Charron told The Post.

Trump and Putin have yet to set a date for their face-to-face meeting and both countries have indicated that their diplomatic envoys have to meet several more times before such a meeting would take place.

The president is meeting Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Friday to potentially sign a framework mineral deal that creates a US-Ukraine joint fund.

The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Post.

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Stephen Collopy

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