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‘We fell in love…’: Israeli partner reveals where he first met Russian woman Nina Kutina
Dror Goldstein said that the relationship with Nina Kutina grew quickly, and they began living together at her residence.
After a Russian woman, identified as Nina Kutina and her two kids, were rescued from Karnataka's Gokarna caves last week, multiple details have emerged in the case, with her estranged partner, Dror Goldstein, bringing up a shared custody battle.
The 40-year-old Russian national and her daughters, aged 6 and 4, were rescued from a remote cave in the Ramatirtha hills near Gokarna on July 9 by the Karnataka police.
A police complaint filed in Goa, as cited by The Indian Express, details how Kutina met her children's father, Dror Goldstein, an Israeli national, in 2017.
“We fell in love” in Goa, the English daily quoted Israeli partner as saying. He added that their relationship grew quickly, and they began living together at Kutina’s residence, where she was raising two sons from a previous relationship.
Goldstein alleged that over time, Kutina began “extracting monies” from him and that she often misbehaved.
In May 2018, he said he arranged for them to travel to Israel, the newspaper reported. However, Kutina was deported to Russia due to visa overstay issues and a lack of travel permits for her son, after which she began living in Ukraine.
“I slowly started cutting off my contact with her due to her behaviour towards me. I felt as if I was used only for money purposes,” Goldstein said in the missing complaint.
Though their contact resumed intermittently, with children born in Ukraine and later in Goa, Goldstein alleged he was gradually pushed out of their lives despite providing financial support. He also claimed Kutina “was totally against sending her children to school” and avoided formal education.
“She started avoiding me and would disappear with the children without informing me,” the newspaper quoted Goldstein.
‘Don’t want to take kids away from mother'
Goldstein, who reached Tumakuru to see his children, expressed concern that he may lose all contact with his two young daughters if they are deported to Russia along with their mother.
The 38-year-old emphasised that he has no intention of separating the children from their mother. “My wish is to be close to my daughters, but I don't want to take them away from their mother. Also, they are very close to their mother,” he told the news agency ANI.
Goldstein said he last met the family at Gokarna’s main beach but was unaware they had moved into a cave. “I didn’t know she was living in a cave, I knew she was in Gokarna,” Goldstein added.
Speaking after visiting Kutina and the children at the detention facility, he said, “My wish is to have shared custody...make sure they have proper education, are healthy and happy...I will go wherever they are.”
Earlier, in a separate interaction with news agency PTI, Goldstein said, “I just want to see my daughters a few times a week and take care of them, too. My concern is that if they go to Russia now, it will get tougher to keep in touch with them. So, I wish they could stay in India.”
According to the police, Kutina and her children—Kumari Prema (6 years, 7 months) and Kumari Ama (4 years)—were using the cave as a home. Kutina told officers she had come from Goa to the forest to “worship God and meditate.”
She and her daughters were rescued and processed by the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) in Bengaluru, then sent to a rescue centre in Tumakuru.
