If anybody can get anywhere, it must be Astakhov.

Would you enlighten us non-Russian-readers and tell us whether there is perhaps an American father, living in Illinois, in the picture?

Custody disputes between parents are hellishly difficult most of the time. It is much easier to see that a child is better off with parents, or at least one parent, or other biological family, than in the hands of a CPS authority. For one thing, the results of foster care, from every country where good studies have been made, are shown to be statistically so much worse than even growing up in difficult social and economic circumstances but in one's own biological family. Certainly there is individual variation, but the statistics, and therefore the prognosis for foster care, are glum.