Ukrainian woman detained in Kazakhstan after alleged FSB trap over grandson's return

Kazakh authorities detained Ukrainian citizen Liubov Rozhanska at Astana airport at the request of Russian authorities, her lawyer, Alexei Pryanishnikov, told The Insider, an independent Russian investigative outlet, on Oct. 2.

She had traveled to Kazakhstan to collect her eight-year-old grandson and bring him back to his father in Odesa under an agreement reached in advance with the boy's Russian relatives.

According to Pryanishnikov, the boy is on Ukraine's list of children abducted by Russia. Ukraine’s Supreme Court ruled in 2025 that he should be handed over to his father.

Rozhanska arrived in Astana on a flight from Istanbul on Oct. 1 and was detained immediately upon landing. The Russian request was reportedly conveyed through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Moscow-led security alliance that includes Kazakhstan.

According to the lawyer, the case dates back to 2021, when it began as a family dispute. Alla Andreeva (née Sochnik), a Ukrainian citizen, was living in Odesa with her son, who was born in 2018 during a previous marriage.

She married Russian sailor Vitaly Andreev in 2020. Pryanishnikov said Andreev pressured her to move to Russia. In August 2021, Andreeva traveled with her son and husband to Kaliningrad to visit his parents. They never returned to Ukraine.

According to Pryanishnikov, the boy's father had agreed to the trip on the condition that his son be returned. After repeated delays, Andreeva renounced Ukrainian citizenship for herself and her son in 2022, and both later obtained Russian citizenship.

The father's attempts to maintain contact with his son led to court proceedings in Kaliningrad. Pryanishkov said psychologists opposed contact because the father was Ukrainian. A court eventually allowed the father, a Ukrainian serviceman, to visit his son during summer holidays, but only in Kaliningrad Region.

In 2023, an agreement was reached to return the boy to Ukraine, but two Ukrainians who traveled to Kaliningrad to collect him were detained, accused of attempted abduction and espionage, and sentenced to 15 and 16 years in prison. A Russian court also named Rozhanska as the alleged organizer of the "abduction."

Talks over returning the child to his father in Ukraine resumed in summer 2026, Pryanishnikov said. He now believes the negotiations were conducted under FSB control, citing the Russian family's insistence on Kazakhstan, repeated delays to the handover, and the fact that the meeting in Astana was scheduled at the same time a Kaliningrad court, at the FSB's request, ordered Rozhanska's arrest in absentia.

"Everything suggests she was being lured there," Pryanishkov said.

The lawyer said the case could ultimately result in Kazakhstan extraditing a Ukrainian citizen to Russia for the first time since the full-scale invasion began.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry press service told journalists in a chat on Oct. 2 that the Ukrainian Embassy in Kazakhstan had asked the Kazakh authorities not to grant Russia's extradition request immediately after learning of Rozhanska's detention.

Ukrainian consular officials also requested permission to visit Rozhanska, who is currently being held in a detention center, and received preliminary approval, the ministry said.

Russia has abducted tens of thousands of Ukrainian children since the start of the full-scale invasion. As of September 2026, Ukraine's Justice Ministry has officially confirmed 20,610 cases of deportation, though Ukrainian officials estimate the real total could number in the hundreds of thousands.