A distraught American father is attempting to flee Ukraine with his 2-year-old kid.

Cesar Quintana, 35, claims that little Alexander’s mother abducted him from their Southern California home in 2020 and fled to Ukraine before Russia began a full-scale invasion.

Quintana told The Associated Press, “I am willing to do anything and everything. All I want is for my son to return.”

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Quintana hasn’t seen Alexander since their last FaceTime conversation on March 2, six days after Russia invaded. His youngster was staying with his mother at his grandmother’s house in Mariupol, a besieged city in southern Ukraine where thousands are believed to have died.

Quintana had come to Ukraine in December in the hopes of reuniting with his son. Now that he is back in the United States, he has lost communication with his child and relatives, and the devastated father has said that he would purchase a plane ticket to Poland next week and may attempt to enter Ukraine across Poland’s border.

“I am not really sure what I am going to do, but I just want to be there close if an opportunity presents itself for him to leave the country,” he said.

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He claimed that he sent money to his estranged wife, Antonina Aslanova, for supplies but that he has not received a response.

According to a letter from Orange County deputy district attorney Tamara Jacobs to Ukrainian officials, Alexander was abducted in December 2020, while Quintana and Aslanova were in the middle of their divorce.

After Aslanova was arrested for driving under the influence, Quintana was given sole custody of the child.

Quintana told the Associated Press that when Alexander was recovering from gall bladder surgery, he permitted his wife to visit him at his house. He awoke one afternoon to discover Aslanova and Alexander vanished.

He texted Aslanova, who informed him that they had just left the house to go to the supermarket. Quintana called the cops, who informed him the next day that she and Alexander had taken a plane to Turkey and then Ukraine, according to the DA’s office, which charged her with kidnapping.

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A California family court judge ordered Alexander’s return to his father in March 2021, but the child’s mother stated she had no plans to return to the United States. Quintana, who was becoming increasingly frantic, travelled to Ukraine and hired an attorney to have Alexander returned to him. He was permitted to pay the boy a visit in Mariupol.

After much persuasion, Aslanova informed Quintana over the phone in November that her mother would meet him at his Mariupol hotel and accompany him to the United States. She also agreed to accompany him back to California to deal with her legal troubles. Quintana and the son were stopped twice by police while driving to Kyiv on their 14-hour journey, and authorities permitted them to proceed but took their American passports.

Quintana claimed officials informed him he needed more than a temporary custody order to award the youngster a passport when he returned to the embassy to collect fresh passports. Quintana wrote to a California family court asking for an order for the document, expressing his fear of a Russian invasion.

“I am afraid Alexander and I will not be secure if this happens, and American flights to Ukraine will be cancelled for an undetermined period of time,” Quintana wrote. The passport was issued once an order was placed.

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Quintana spent Christmas with his son and planned to return to the United States before 2022. Aslanova, with whom he’d been in communication, had requested that he not abandon her.

Quintana’s mother, on the other hand, did not want Aslanova to go and filed a complaint with the Mariupol police, he added. When he and Alexander were stopped at the Kyiv airport in December, she was with the cops.

He consented to hand over his son under threat of arrest after Alexander became distressed, citing a desire not to add to the boy’s discomfort.

According to an AP translation of the police paperwork, Quintana was provided, it claimed Quintana withdrew his son from his Mariupol hotel without permission from the child’s mother in November, initiating an inquiry.

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Quintana said he kissed his son as he handed him up and told him, “Bye, for now, son, but I won’t give up.” “I’ll take you back to your house.”

According to Quintana’s lawyer, the police document was nothing more than a ruse to prevent Alexander from leaving. Since the war broke out, the lawyer has been fighting the Russians in the military.

A hearing on an international parental child abduction that was planned for February has been rescheduled for March.