INVESTIGATION: 339 children named in Istanbul, and Moscow silent on more than 200

One line per child

Istanbul, June 2, 2025

339 names. A list handed to the Russian delegation in Istanbul on June 2, 2025. Partial information on about 20% of the children. Nothing on more than 200 others. Nearly 16 months.

A list is one line per child.

A line is a name. A line is a child Kyiv says it has already identified. A line is a family, or an institution, waiting for the box across from it to be filled in.

What 339 means

339 is not a total. It is the opposite of a total.

Kyiv gives the total elsewhere: 20,651 verified cases as of September 18, 2026, which the Ukrainian registry classifies as deportation and forced transfer of children.

The total is an ocean. The Istanbul list is a glass of water held out to Moscow. Start with these. With names no one can drown in an average.

339 lines fit on a few sheets. You turn them with a fingertip. The paper makes that small, dry sound you never hear in a press release.

A line is not up for debate. It waits.

Twenty percent

September 25, 2:02 p.m. in Kyiv

On September 25, 2026, at 2:02 p.m. Kyiv time, the Interfax-Ukraine agency publishes an interview with Maksym Maksymov.

He heads Bring Kids Back UA, the Ukrainian presidential initiative that brings children home.

On the Istanbul list, he gives two figures. The Russian side provided limited information on about 20% of the children. On more than 200 others, no information at all.

He stresses that these are children already identified. Not statistical ghosts. Case files.

Nothing. Not a date. Not a place. Not a status.

More than 200 silences

Do the division with me. About 20% of 339 is roughly 68 children. For them, a partial answer. For more than 200, a void.

I stand with the 339 names, against the answer Moscow gave in Istanbul on July 23, 2025, because as of September 25, 2026, more than 200 of those children still do not have a single line.

339 names. More than 200 without a line.

Across the table, Moscow offers percentages. Not names.

A percentage answers a crowd. A list is waiting for names.

What Moscow promised

Medinsky, June 2, 2025

On the day of the handover, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, an adviser to Vladimir Putin, talks about the list.

According to the Associated Press, he accuses Kyiv of turning the subject into a show. He also confirms the number: 339 children.

Then he sets a condition. The children would be returned if their parents or guardians could be found.

Found. By whom?

And a child whose parents are gone, whose only guardian was a Ukrainian institution…

The answer of July 23

On July 23, 2025, the third round opens in Istanbul. According to TASS, Medinsky says some children have returned to Ukraine and work is continuing on the others.

They will return immediately, he adds, if their parents, relatives or representatives come forward.

Same day, same round. The Russian delegation hands Kyiv its own list: 20 Russian children who, Moscow claims, are in Ukraine or were taken to Western Europe.

339 on one side. 20 on the other. A list, and a counter-list set down beside it.

The promise came down to one word: immediately. Fourteen months later, the word is still waiting.

Immediately, said Moscow. Fourteen months, counts Kyiv.

Thirty percent, then most

Zakharova, August 8, 2025

Here is Moscow’s best argument, in the form Moscow would sign. I give it whole.

On August 8, 2025, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, responds to a statement by several states on Ukrainian children.

According to TASS, she says 30% of the data on the list has not been confirmed. A significant share of the children, she says, have never been to Russia, are now adults, or have already returned to their families.

She adds that Russia does not stand in the way of returns. It promotes them “in every possible way,” she says.

In the text published by the ministry, the Ukrainian children who are really in Russia are in state care, in suitable institutions. Many lives were saved, it says, because the children were “evacuated” from the war zone.

Lavrov, September 30, 2025

A little over seven weeks later, the number had grown.

On September 30, 2025, on the sidelines of the Valdai Club, Sergei Lavrov claims, according to TASS, that most of the 339 turned out to be adults, or outside Russia.

In June, Moscow called it a show. In August, Moscow said 30%. In September, Moscow said most.

The percentage moved. The 339 names have not moved by a single letter.

This is the strongest challenge in the file. It deserves an answer in numbers, not an adjective.

Moscow’s number grew. The list did not.

Turn their math around

By Zakharova’s own arithmetic

Let’s take Zakharova’s number, and only hers.

If 30% of the data is in doubt, 70% is not, by her own arithmetic. Seventy percent of 339 is about 237 children.

For those 237 names, Moscow in August 2025 claimed neither adulthood, nor absence from Russia, nor a return already made.

Kyiv says it received limited information on about two in 10.

This is not a Ukrainian number against a Russian number. It is not Yale against the Kremlin. It is not a wartime estimate. It is not a total no one will ever be able to verify. It is not a matter of adults slipped into a list of children.

What the answer leaves out

It is the gap between what Moscow does not dispute and what Moscow documents.

Put another way: even granting every reservation from the Russian ministry, about 237 names would remain unchallenged, with a partial answer on about 68.

I’ll admit it. I first read 20% as a start. One in five is not zero. Then I did the other division, and the start became an admission.

Two in 10. Seven in 10. In between, children.

And yet Moscow’s answer still comes in percentages.

Their number indicts them better than ours does.

Our numbers won’t sit still

The gap Moscow exploits

Now, what makes my own camp uncomfortable. I publish it with the same care.

As of September 18, Kyiv counts 20,651 verified cases. On the same September 25, the Kyiv Independent writes that the justice ministry confirms 20,610. Ukrainian officials, it adds, estimate the real total could run into the hundreds of thousands.

Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), puts the number of children taken from their homes at around 35,000.

Twenty thousand verified. Thirty-five thousand estimated. Hundreds of thousands put forward. A list of 339.

That is exactly the space Moscow moves into. According to TASS, Medinsky was already answering, on July 23, 2025, the claims of tens of thousands of children taken by pointing to the list of 339, which he said had been dealt with.

The argument lands. I won’t brush it aside.

What Kyiv admits itself

Maksymov, for his part, grants a point I would not have written in his place.

Paperwork, guardianship and security risks also slow some cases down. Those obstacles, he says, the Ukrainian side can largely resolve on its own.

That is true. And it does not change this: no Ukrainian form fills in the box across from the name.

More than 200 times, Moscow holds the pen.

A number that moves does not erase a name that stays.

$27 million, and a lab on borrowed time

August 21, a grant competition canceled

A second admission. This one concerns the West, my center of gravity.

In March 2026, the State Department announces a US$25 million program to identify, return and reintegrate these children.

On August 21, according to RFE/RL, the grant competition is canceled. The program is carved up again: about $15 million to find the children, bring them back and preserve evidence, $10 million for rehabilitation.

The Yale lab documents at least 210 sites, in Russia and in occupied territory, where Ukrainian children were taken. Its director, Nathaniel Raymond, says the team is burning through its last donations. Without new funding, it could be let go around December.

A lab is people cross-checking. Without them, a number goes back to being a claim.

On September 3, Senators Tillis and Blumenthal and Representatives Kaptur and Fitzpatrick, from both parties, press Secretary of State Marco Rubio to move faster.

September 24, $27 million

On September 24, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the State Department announces US$27 million, according to United24 and the Kyiv Independent. Twelve million awarded. Fifteen million still under review.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, thanks Washington.

August 21: a bad call by the Trump administration. September 24: a good one. It comes late, but it comes.

And yet an announced envelope is not a paid team. If the Yale researchers leave in December, the child-by-child evidence would lose one of its hands.

A promised dollar verifies no name.

You know this name

The Kherson children’s home

Among the silences, Maksymov names an institution: the Kherson Regional Children’s Home.

That name already has a history.

In June 2024, the Kyiv Independent picked up a New York Times investigation. 46 children from the Kherson children’s home, toddlers in institutional care, some with cerebral palsy, were taken by Russian officials in 2022.

At the start of the invasion, staff had hidden them in a church basement.

On April 25, 2022, according to the investigation, Russian officials find them and move them 290 kilometers away, to occupied Crimea.

Children they moved themselves

Remember this. These children did not wander off down a road. According to the investigation, Russian officials moved them.

Who can say better where they are than the people who took them?

By June 2024, the Kyiv Independent wrote, seven of them had been able to return to Ukraine, with help from Qatari mediation.

For children from that home who are on the Istanbul list, Moscow provided nothing, according to Maksymov.

Moscow said it promotes returns. On Kherson, its answer is a blank page.

You do not lose what you moved yourself.

Another line, elsewhere

A legal status rewritten

The first mechanism Maksymov describes is neither a camp nor a bus. It is a piece of paper.

Russia, he says, changes the child’s legal status. It blocks contact with families. It allows no independent monitoring.

For the Kherson toddlers, the investigation picked up by the Kyiv Independent shows what that means. Russian birth certificates. Russian citizenship. Profiles on Russian adoption sites. At least two children placed with Russian families.

One line on a list, in Istanbul. Another line on a birth certificate, elsewhere.

The first looks for the child. The second covers the child over.

What a toddler keeps

A two-year-old does not keep an address. A two-year-old keeps a voice. The sound of a door. The way someone lifts them into bed.

Since April 2022, four years and five months have gone by.

That is long enough for a new first name to become the only one heard in the morning.

That is what cannot be repaired. Not the journey. The time.

A list can still claim a child. It cannot give back the years.

And for a child whose civil records have been rewritten, who exactly is supposed to come forward?

A rewritten name no longer answers the list.

Small groups, soft words

What has changed since 2022

The method has changed, Maksymov says.

At the start of the full-scale war, he says, transfers were massive: boarding schools, orphanages, Kherson in 2022. Today, children leave in small groups.

So-called recreation camps. Children sent to Russia to study, as the phrase goes. Children separated from their parents during what Moscow calls filtration. Russian guardians appointed.

Every word is soft. Every word is a departure.

According to a report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe that cites Russian officials, Interfax-Ukraine reports, about 53,000 children from the occupied territories were to go through so-called re-education camps in summer 2025. Fifty thousand were planned for summer 2026.

Consent under threat

Some transfers are presented as voluntary.

Maksymov describes parents threatened with losing their parental rights, or their child, if the child does not attend Russian school, militarized programs or the camps.

The formal consent of parents, he says, is very often the product of coercion rather than choice.

A small group makes no picture. No filmed bus. No convoy. A signature under threat, and a departure that looks like the first day of school.

Nobody sees a small group leave. One morning, someone is simply missing at roll call.

A small group makes no headline. It makes an absence.

Putin and Lvova-Belova, two warrants

The Hague, March 17, 2023

This point is written with its exact status.

On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights.

According to the Court, there are “reasonable grounds to believe” they bear responsibility. The crime alleged: the unlawful deportation of children and their unlawful transfer from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia, as war crimes. Since at least February 24, 2022.

The Court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, said at the time that children cannot be treated “as if they are the spoils of war.”

A warrant is not a conviction. Both remain accused.

Two names. A decision by judges. An accusation, not a sentence.

What the list adds

And yet a warrant brings no one home. It points.

The Istanbul list does the reverse. It points at no one responsible. It names children, and asks where they are.

A warrant targets two names. A list carries 339.

One waits for an arrest. The other waits for a line.

Two names on a warrant. 339 on a list.

Toronto, in three days

September 28 and 29

A conference is being held in Toronto on September 28 and 29, according to RFE/RL. On the agenda: the return of children, detainees and prisoners of war.

Toronto is hosting. There will be numbers.

20,651 verified cases. 35,000 according to Yale. 2,644 children returned as of September 25, according to the government portal Children of War. Percentages, too.

What belongs on the table

I propose something smaller, and harder. Put the Istanbul list on the table. Line by line.

For every name without an answer, demand a date, a place, a status.

More than 200 times.

The Istanbul list is not a slogan. It is a document. It has a date. It has a recipient. It is waiting for an answer.

A total gets applause in a room. A list gets checked, name by name, and nobody applauds it.

In Toronto, read the names. Not the percentages.

Patience with no date

Sixteen months of percentages

We accept that the list of June 2, 2025, is still waiting in September 2026.

We accept that the answer comes as 30%, then as most.

We accept that toddlers from Kherson carry Russian birth certificates.

We accept that the lab counting the sites is also counting its last donations.

We accept that consent obtained under threat passes for a choice.

We call it diplomatic patience.

It is attrition.

Attrition signs nothing. It lets the seasons go by.

The empty box across the page

Somewhere, a phone that does not ring. A family checking the volume twice.

And yet the box across the page is not empty by chance. It is empty because Moscow answered in percentages where Kyiv had written names.

Patience without a date ends up looking like consent.

More than 200 empty lines

The list on September 25

On June 2, 2025, the Istanbul list had 339 lines. On September 25, 2026, it still has 339.

About one in five carries a partial answer, according to Kyiv. More than 200 carry none.

At first, a line was a name. Today, it is a wait that has an age.

Where, since when, under what name

What remains to be established comes down to three questions per child. Where. Since when. Under what name.

What answer will we demand for each of the 339 lines, and from whom?

Toronto opens in three days. On the list, the names have not changed. Elsewhere, for some children, they have.

339 names handed over in Istanbul. More than 200 still unanswered.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Interfax-Ukraine — the Istanbul list, 339 children and answers on 20%, September 25, 2026
• Interfax-Ukraine — 20,651 verified cases as of September 18, September 25, 2026
• TASS — Maria Zakharova on the list of 339 and the 30%, August 8, 2025

Secondary Sources:

• UN News, United Nations — ICC arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova, March 17, 2023
• Kyiv Independent — New York Times investigation into the Kherson children’s home, June 3, 2024
• RFE/RL — Yale, 35,000 children and a reshaped US program, September 9, 2026