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Contrary to Russian ‘propaganda’ video that claimed he was killed in the war, an American who went to Ukraine to save his child says he lives in California

    Soldiers of the militia of the Donetsk People's Republic walk past damaged apartment buildings near the Illich Iron & Steel Works Metallurgical Plant, the second largest metallurgical enterprise in Ukraine, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, Saturday, April 16, 2022. Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of ​​Azov, has been besieged by Russian troops and troops from self-declared separatist areas in eastern Ukraine for more than six weeks. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov)

    Militia soldiers of the Donetsk People’s Republic walk past damaged apartment buildings in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Saturday, April 16.AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov

    • A Russian soldier claimed in a video that Cesar Quintana had been killed in a battle in Mariupol.

    • “It’s pure propaganda,” Quintana told The Washington Post, saying he is still alive and in California.

    • Quintana traveled to Ukraine last year in an attempt to rescue his son, who was taken there in 2020.

    Although a video posted to Telegram by a Russian soldier claims he was killed in combat in Mariupol, Cesar Quintana, the father of a kidnapped two-year-old, says he is still alive in California.

    “It’s pure propaganda,” Quintana told The Washington Post of the video, which circulated on pro-Russian disinformation channels.

    The video, which showed photos of his US passport with written coordinates intended to be the location of his body, was posted by a Russian army member who claimed Quintana had joined forces with Ukrainians and was murdered.

    “These are for his relatives so they can bury him after the fighting ends,” the man said in a statement
    Russian, The Washington Post reported. “We are people and we should stay that way.”

    Quintana was last in Ukraine in December while traveling to rescue his son from his estranged wife, Antonina Aslanova Quintana, who he says kidnapped the child in 2020 and fled the country. After a dispute with the boy’s maternal grandmother when he tried to return him to the United States in December, Quintana said his passport had been confiscated by Ukrainian authorities. On January 15 of this year, Aslanova was issued a child abduction order.

    Now back in the US, Quintana told the Associated Press that the last time he had contact with his son was on March 2, less than a week after the invasion began. The child lived with his mother at his grandmother’s house in Mariupol, a besieged city that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described this week as the “worst situation” in the country where “tens of thousands” of civilians may have been killed.

    “I’m willing to do anything and everything,” Quintana told the Associated Press. “I just want my son to be back.”

    Quintana did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

    Read the original article on Business Insider