Sara Huston, Co-founder and President of DNA Bridge and researcher at Northwestern University’s Lurie Children’s Hospital, sat down at ISHI 36 to discuss one of the most complex humanitarian forensics challenges in the world: the missing persons crisis created by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The Scale of the Problem
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has faced a missing persons crisis without modern precedent. An estimated 80,000 Ukrainians are missing as of September 2025. More than 10,000 remains of fallen service members have been returned from Russia — many mutilated and co-mingled. At least 19,546 Ukrainian children were taken into Russia, a significant portion removed from institutional care facilities for children with special needs.
Ukraine is simultaneously managing mass fatality identifications, the tracking of living displaced persons, and an unprecedented case of child abduction — all while an active war continues. Huston, who has spent her career studying the ethical, legal, and social implications of DNA in missing persons and humanitarian contexts, described what makes this moment singular.
“I think this is one of the first times it’s been done at this scale, that the war is happening and the DNA identifications are happening. But also there’s these living family members that are separated and displaced.”
Building Capacity Under Pressure
Three years ago, Ukraine had 9 laboratories capable of managing DNA data. Today that number has grown to more than 20 institutions with DNA profiling equipment — some equipped with rapid DNA instruments, others with full genome sequencing capability. That growth happened while responding to air raid alerts and managing active frontlines.
The international forensic community has been a significant part of that expansion. Government, academic, intergovernmental, and commercial laboratories from around the world have contributed equipment, instruments, reagents, and expertise. As of January 2024, all enlisted Ukrainian military service members provide an optional pre-emptive DNA specimen. At least a quarter of service members are enrolled as of August 2025, with enrollment efforts continuing at the frontlines.
Missing persons reporting has also been streamlined. As of May 2025, all reporting flows through a common system — a meaningful step toward the interoperability that large-scale identification efforts require.
The Children: A Different Kind of Problem
Of the nearly 20,000 children taken to Russia, 1,625 have been returned as of September 2025. Many of those taken were removed from institutional care — children with special needs who may not have living parents or immediate family in Ukraine. Their identity documents have been altered. Names changed. Birth dates changed. In some cases, children have been adopted out.
DNA reunification of living people presents a fundamentally different challenge than the identification of the deceased. Systems for mass fatality identification exist — imperfect, but established. Systems built for reconnecting living displaced individuals across international borders, with corrupted identity records, in the context of an ongoing geopolitical conflict, do not.
“DNA is rarely used for reunification of living people… We understand very well how to use it in mass fatalities and in global conflicts and identification of the dead. Those systems exist. Do they work well? Not always.”
Where returns have occurred, DNA testing has played a role — a 1-to-1 confirmation between child and potential family member. Russia will not release a child without a DNA test. But there is no robust database infrastructure built to support this kind of systematic reunification at scale, and that gap sits at the center of Huston’s ongoing work.
A Question of Ownership
Huston’s approach to this work is grounded in a principle that shapes her research at both DNA Bridge and Northwestern: solutions built for Ukraine need to be owned by Ukraine.
“Let’s not come in as Americans and assume we have the answers. Let’s come into Ukraine and say, okay, universities, what are you capable of? Ukrainian universities, what are the families capable of? What are the local NGOs actually doing?”
In late August and early September 2025, Huston and her team traveled to Kyiv to conduct research with displaced families — gathering data on their attitudes toward DNA, their understanding of what happened to the children who were taken, and their levels of trust in various systems and institutions. She also met with the commissioner for the Ukraine Office for Missing Persons Under Special Circumstances, who oversees all missing persons categories: war dead, civilians, service members, and children taken to Russia.
What Ukraine Is Teaching the Field
Huston is explicit that her interest in Ukraine is not only about Ukraine. Prior conflicts — Chile, Rwanda — did not have the infrastructure, the technology, or the international visibility to build the kind of systems that might prevent the same failures from recurring. Ukraine represents a rare window.
“This is not just to help Ukraine, but my interest is in establishing global priorities and global processes because this will happen again and again… We need to understand these processes in Ukraine so we can learn from them for the future.”
The forensic DNA community has already demonstrated it can respond — in equipment, expertise, and infrastructure. What Huston is pressing toward now is the harder question: whether the field can help design systems durable enough to serve the next crisis before it arrives.
Watch her full ISHI 36 interview to hear her describe the scope of the challenge and the work underway.