Kazakh authorities detained Ukrainian national Liubov Rozhanska at Astana airport at Russia's request as she was traveling to pick up her grandson and take him to his father in Odesa.
That is according to DW, Ukrinform reports.
According to the outlet, Rozhanska arrived in Astana from Istanbul. She wanted to pick up her grandson in Astana, where he was supposed to be brought from Russia. The boy is the son of her daughter Alla Andreeva (Sonchyk), who lived in Odesa. He was born in her first marriage in 2018.
In 2021, Rozhanska's daughter traveled with her son to Russia's Kaliningrad region to join her second husband, a Russian national, and remained there. In 2022, Alla Andreeva renounced her Ukrainian citizenship and obtained Russian citizenship for herself and her son.
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In 2025, the Supreme Court of Ukraine, following a lawsuit filed by the child's father, ruled that Odesa should be the boy's place of residence.
The outlet reports that in summer 2026, the family of the boy's mother's new husband contacted Rozhanska and offered to hand the boy over to his Ukrainian father and his grandmother. According to DW, by that time a Russian court had ordered Rozhanska's detention in a case involving the alleged abduction of a child and had also begun preparing documents for her extradition.
In comments to the outlet, Rozhanska's lawyers, Oleksii Prianyshnykov and Riza Nurbayeva, said that the request for her arrest had been made through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) channel. Nurbayeva also said that Rozhanska had been unaware of the criminal case against her.
According to DW, Liubov Rozhanska is currently being held in a detention center in the Kazakh capital, with a court hearing expected within three days. There is a possibility that Rozhanska could be deported to Russia.
As reported, Russians illegally sentenced 30-year-old Ukrainian national Yan Haupt to 24 years in prison for allegedly preparing and carrying out a "terrorist attack."
Photo: Vyacheslav Bukharov, CC BY-SA 4.0