NEW: Melania Trump and Olena Zelenska Team Up to Protect Children

Welcome back. Elena Zelenska, excuse me, the first lady of Ukraine was in Washington this week. She was working with first lady Melania Trump on education and also U.S. efforts to bring home Ukrainian kids abducted by Russia. I sat down with her at the Ukrainian embassy for her first ever interview with Fox News. The community that has been created by the first lady, Melania Trump, is very important. Ukrainian first lady Elena Zelenska joining her American counterpart, first lady Melania Trump, a humanoid robot and leaders from 40 other countries at the White House this week to promote children's safety in an age of online learning, a world Ukrainian kids learn by necessity. It started at the time of the COVID pandemic, but unfortunately many Ukrainian children continued to learn online after the large scale invasion started. Are they able to keep the pace with their peers in the EU? Is the gap bigger when you're talking about kids on the front lines? One third of our children can only learn online because of security situation. We can already observe is a significant educational gap, lower results, lower test results in math exams and other disciplines. Zelenska says Ukraine's Ministry of Education is working to return as many kids as possible back to in-person learning. But because of the war, only schools with on-site bomb shelters can receive them. It must also be hard for children to preserve a sense of childhood while they're dealing with this circumstance and they're fighting for their survival. You're quite right in saying this, when you are sleeping in your bed and your sleep is interrupted by the air raids and you have to go with your parents to the bomb shelter and where you go to the kindergarten in the morning, this is not normalcy. That's for children who are still with their families in war-torn Ukraine. The government is still searching for some 20,000 abducted by Russia, an effort boosted by a fresh $25 million in funding from the Trump administration this week. How much has First Lady Melania Trump's partnership helped in this effort? How often do you talk to her? We talk and I'm very grateful to her for getting involved in this. She deeply understands how important this subject is and I am sure that her involvement is very helpful because her advocacy attracts attention. The effort involves enlisting third-country partners to extract information from Russia about the kids' whereabouts, then pressuring their return. It is very difficult to verify lists of names of children that we are looking for because Russia is doing everything to make sure that this information is difficult to find. So far, about 2,000 have come home, a handful at a time. If we go as slow as this, it will take dozens of years to bring them all back. It's very important that as many countries as possible join us. This month, a UN investigation ruled Russia's mass deportation of Ukrainian children a crime against humanity. Moscow reportedly running a network of more than 200 camps where Ukrainian kids are stripped of their identities, given Russian names and forcibly adopted into Russian families. Children as young as eight subjected to military training, including grenade-throwing competitions. Do you think that the rest of the world really understands what Ukrainian children are going through? I am confident you cannot fully understand when you are away from the situation unless you are physically present in a country at war. A new war starts, but it doesn't mean that the old war is over. We are fighting for attention. A looming concern for Ukraine is how the operation in Iran might change U.S. priorities. When the U.S. takes decisions like temporarily lifting the sanctions on Russian oil to fix the oil pricing for a period of time, and that could indirectly sustain Russia's war machine, does that have an impact on morale? We do not stop hoping that the United States remains our strategic partner. This is the largest democracy in the world, and we are confident that this support will not stop. Of course, it is difficult for Ukrainians to see some steps. Really, these decisions are to be made by our partners. As Ukraine defends its survival for a fifth year, one decision is up to Zelensky. You never wanted President Zelensky to run. Do you want him to run again? I don't think anything has changed since the last time. Do I want for this to happen a second time? This is a very difficult path. It's exhausting. And I can say that we're both tired. However, there's obligation, there's duty. And if he decides again that he needs to stay to get this job done, then this is up to him to make this decision. Is that what sustains you, the sense of duty? Not just this. I don't know how you could obediently just accept that somebody wants to destroy you, to remove you from this part of Europe. So this thirst for life and the love of your country and the people who live there, I can see the struggle of Ukrainians, and this is what inspires me. Well, you're doing an incredible job at a job you didn't ask for. And I appreciate you sharing your time with us. Thank you so much. Hey, everyone. I'm Emily Campagno. Catch me and my co-hosts Harris Faulkner and Kayleigh McEnany on Outnumbered every weekday at 12 p.m. Eastern, or set your DVR. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the Fox News YouTube page for daily highlights.