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Ukrainian Grandmother Flew to Kazakhstan to Bring Her Grandson Home—And Was Detained on Russia’s Request
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Kazakh authorities detained Ukrainian citizen Liubov Rozhanska after she flew to Astana expecting to collect her grandson and bring him back to his family in Ukraine—only to discover at passport control that Russia wanted her detained over an alleged attempt to abduct the same child.
Rozhanska was taken into custody at Astana airport on October 1 after arriving from Istanbul, her attorneys told Deutsche Welle on October 1.
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She is currently being held in a detention center in the Kazakh capital, with a court hearing expected within days.
The case stems from a years-long custody dispute involving Rozhanska’s grandson.
In 2021, the boy’s mother, Alla Andreeva, took him from Odesa to Russia’s Kaliningrad region, where relatives of her second husband live. After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Andreeva applied in March 2022 to renounce Ukrainian citizenship for herself and her son and later obtained Russian citizenship for both.
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Meanwhile, the boy’s Ukrainian father challenged the situation in court. In March 2025, Ukraine’s Supreme Court ruled that the child should live with his father in Odesa.
More than a year later, in July 2026, Andreeva’s current husband, Vitaly Andreev, and his father, Vyacheslav Andreev, contacted Rozhanska and offered to hand the child over to her and his Ukrainian father, according to her attorney, with Astana supposed to be the meeting point.
But by then, Russian authorities had already been pursuing Rozhanska.
A criminal case had been opened against her in Russia in 2023 over an alleged attempted kidnapping of the child.
In late August 2026, a Kaliningrad court ordered her pretrial detention, while Russian authorities prepared paperwork to have her placed on a wanted list and extradited through the Collective Security Treaty Organization, according to documents reviewed by DW.
Rozhanska’s attorneys say she knew nothing about the Russian criminal case or detention order. One of her Kazakh lawyers told DW that she had never even entered Russia.
When Rozhanska arrived in Astana on October 1, Kazakh border authorities detained her on the basis of the Russian request.
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Her attorney, Alexei Pryanishnikov, believes the circumstances raise questions over whether the planned transfer of the child and Rozhanska’s subsequent trip to Kazakhstan were used to draw her into a jurisdiction where Russia could seek her detention.
He described the arrest as “a fairly clearly planned operation” by Russia’s FSB and suggested it may have been driven by a “desire to curry favor and improve clearance statistics.”
Earlier, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed more than 20,000 cases of the unlawful deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children done by Russia.
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