Russia was gathering soldiers on the Ukrainian border when a desperate Cesar Quintana showed up at the US embassy in Kiev in December to implore that he issue a passport to his young son, who had been kidnapped by his Ukrainian-American mother, a year earlier.
Quintana obtained a document from the US courts stating that she had custody of two-year-old Alexander. He was given his passport, bought plane tickets and a few days later he went to the airport to return to the United States. But he couldn't board the flight.
The boy's Ukrainian grandmother had obtained an order to have the child delivered to him, which was enforced by the Ukrainian police.
Now, three months later, Ukraine is devastated by war. And Mariupol, where Alexander's mother and grandmother live, is besieged by the Russians. Quintana, back in the United States, cannot communicate with his ex-wife and is so desperate that he considers going back to Ukraine to look for his son. “I'm willing to do anything,” he told the Associated Press. “I want to bring my son.”
Quintana, 35, says she last spoke to Alexander on FaceTime on March 2. He claims that he sent money to his ex-wife, Antonina Aslanova, but that he never heard from them again.
Russian bombings cut off communications with Mariupol. Tens of thousands of residents have fled the city and there are an undetermined number of deaths.
The PA tried unsuccessfully to communicate with Aslanova. LinkedIn messages and emails did not receive a response. She does not currently have a lawyer handling the child custody dispute in California and the phone number she gave in the United States did not work. A message was left on another phone in his name.
Andrew Klausner, a lawyer who represented her in the past, when she unsuccessfully sought an order from a judge so that Quintana could not approach her, said that Aslanova had left the country and had no contact with her since the end of 2020.
Quintana created a website about her case and traveled to Washington this week to seek help from some legislator and ask Ukrainian diplomats for permission to return to her country.
The State Department declined to discuss the matter, but on February 15 it wrote a letter to California representative Lou Correa saying that when Quintana tried to bring her son back to the United States in December, she did not have the consent of the child's mother or the approval of the Ukrainian authorities handling the case. about custody there.
“While the parent who stayed in the United States may have custody or the right to visit the child in the United States, that order may not be valid in the country where the boy is located,” wrote April Conway, head of the State Department's unit in charge of juvenile affairs.
The cases of parents who dispute the possession of a child from different countries are very complicated and activists say that rarely does a minor who is taken by one parent to another country return to the country in which he lived. In the case of Quintana, the situation is even more complex because the US embassy in Kiev is closed.
Many of the details of Alexander's case are contained in a September letter from Orange County Prosecutor Tamara Jacobs to Ukrainian officials. According to that letter, Alexander was kidnapped in December 2020, when Quintana and Aslanova were divorcing. Quintana was given custody of the child after Aslanova was arrested on suspicion that she was driving while intoxicated.
Quintana said she authorized Aslanova to visit the boy at home while he was recovering from gallbladder surgery. She recounted that one day she fell asleep and that when she woke up in the afternoon, she and Alexander were gone.
Quintana called the police because Aslanova could not remove the child from the house by court order. The next day he was informed that both had boarded a plane to Ukraine, with a stopover in Turkey, according to the prosecutor's office, which accused Aslanova of kidnapping a minor.
In March 2021, a judge ruled that Alexander should return to the United States. That same month, Aslanova informed the court that she was being prosecuted for her arrest for drunk driving that she did not plan to return.
Quintana, meanwhile, obtained a visa and traveled to Ukraine, where she hired a lawyer. He said that he had been in contact with Aslanova, supported her financially and that in Ukraine she was allowed to visit Alexander.
Quintana said she tried to convince Aslanova to allow her to take the child to California and that she return to resolve her legal situation. She added that in November she finally agreed and told him that her mother, who was taking care of the child, would take Alexander to her hotel in Mariupol.
As soon as he met the boy, they drove to Kiev. Quintana said he was twice stopped by the police during a 14-hour trip. The authorities confirmed that he was the father and allowed him to continue, but they kept both their American passports.
In Kiev, Quintana went to the US embassy to get new passports. He indicated that embassy officials asked him for more than temporary custody of Alexander to issue him a passport, so he wrote to a California family court. He was worried about a possible Russian invasion.
“If there was an (invasion), neither Alexander nor I would be safe and US airline flights to Ukraine would be suspended for an indefinite period,” Quintana wrote. The order he sought was issued and Alexander was given a passport.
Father and son spent Christmas together and planned to return to the United States before the new year. Quintana says she spoke to Aslanova on the phone and that she asked him not to leave her behind.
The boy's grandmother, Quintana said, did not want the boy to leave and reported him to the Mariupol police. Quintana said she showed up with the police at the airport in Kiev. The police showed him a document in Ukrainian — a language he doesn't understand — and threatened to arrest him if he didn't hand over the child, according to Quintana. The little boy became very nervous and he decided to give it to his grandmother to calm him down.
Quintana handed over a copy of the document that the Ukrainian police gave to the PA, which had it translated. The document said that Quintana took the child from the Mariupol hotel at the end of November without the mother's permission, and requested an investigation to determine whether Quintana was actually authorized to take the child.
The Ukrainian lawyer told Quintana that the document was a pretext to prevent him from leaving the country.
Quintana said she stayed in Ukraine until the end of January, when her visa expired, and that she returned to the United States because her stay permit was not renewed.
The Russian invasion complicates everything. Quintana's Ukrainian lawyer is now in the army, fighting the Russians.
Quintana plans to buy a plane ticket to travel to Poland next week and could try to enter Ukraine from there.
“I don't really know what I'm going to do. I want to at least be close in case there is an opportunity to get him out of the country,” he said.
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