A Ukrainian grandmother came to Kazakhstan to collect her grandson. Instead, she was detained at Russia’s request.

Ukrainian citizen Liubov Rozhanska was detained at Astana’s airport after arriving from Istanbul. She is now being held in a pretrial detention center, and a court hearing is expected within three days. Russia requested her detention through the Collective Security Treaty Organization, her lawyers told DW. Rozhanska could be extradited to Russia, where she is being investigated for child abduction.

Rozhanska had flown to Kazakhstan to pick up her grandson, who was to be brought there from Russia, lawyer Alexey Pryanishnikov said. The boy was born in 2018 during her daughter Alla Andreyeva’s first marriage. In 2021, his mother took him from Odesa to the Kaliningrad region to join her second husband. In 2022, she renounced her Ukrainian citizenship and her son’s, and both became Russian citizens.

In 2025, following a lawsuit filed by the boy’s father, Ukraine’s Supreme Court ruled that the child must live in Odesa. In the summer of 2026, relatives of Andreyeva’s second husband contacted Rozhanska and offered to hand the boy over.

According to Pryanishnikov, while the child’s handover was being discussed, the Kaliningrad office of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) was already preparing paperwork to put Rozhanska on a wanted list and seek her extradition. Kaliningrad’s Tsentralny District Court had already ordered her held in custody on August 27. Her lawyers said the criminal investigation into the alleged attempted abduction had begun back in 2023. They called Rozhanska’s detention “a fairly well-planned operation” and said the FSB had set her up.