From a Maternity Ward to Arrest in Argentina: How a Russian Mother and Her Child Became Victims of a Questionable Investigation

There are stories that authorities in any country try to hide in dusty archives, drown in bureaucratic reports, and dissolve in the dry language of official documents — so that no one asks inconvenient questions.

The story of the young Russian mother Elena Makarova and her son Miroslav is exactly that kind. It begins with the barely audible cry of an infant who, through no fault of his own, ended up at the center of an international scandal involving law enforcement abuse.

The case is already being examined by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington — a body funded in part by U.S. taxpayer dollars — and if the violations are confirmed, it will be another blow to the reputation of democracy in Argentina. When a newborn and his mother become hostages to a questionable investigation, it’s a stark reminder of why America has always stood for the protection of human rights worldwide.

The Hospital Operation: A Detention No One Can Explain

To recap: Elena Makarova and her newborn Miroslav were detained immediately after childbirth in March 2025 at a hospital in Argentina. They were detained in March 2025 as alleged victims in the case of a Russian sect in Bariloche — a sect Elena had never heard of. She was labeled as a victim of Konstantin Rudnev, whom she did not know. They were treated like criminals, ridiculed, and held in conditions akin to torture, as if they were terrorists. Now, they are being called “victims” while the authorities act as if they don’t exist.

“My Son Lived as No Infant Should”
An Infant Under Stress: The First Signs of Damage

When Elena, finally back in Russia from Argentina, first took Miroslav to a doctor, she expected to hear the usual: “everything is fine.”

But instead, the doctor looked at him for a long time — then raised her eyes and wrote in the report:

anemia,
chronic stress,
signs of insufficient care,
lack of medical supervision,
risk to the immune system,
possible consequences for the nervous system.

All of this is the result of the actions of specific people: Argentine prosecutors Fernando Oscar Arrigo and his assistants Tomás Labal, Gustavo Javier Rebora, and Rodrigo Nicolás Treviranus, who literally arrested a mother and a newborn infant and destroyed the baby’s life for their own ambitions.

In his first three months of life, Miroslav experienced situations of violence that even an adult man should not have to endure.

The Unproven Case: How She Got Involved in Someone Else’s Affair
How a Mother Ended Up Accused in a Case She Had No Connection To

Elena says she was detained “by mistake.” But the word “mistake” sounds too mild for what happened. It was an inhumane bureaucratic machine that crushed a woman with a newborn. Argentine prosecutor Oscar Fernando Arrigo and his team: Tomás Labal, Gustavo Revora, Rodrigo Treviranus, included her name in the case file as if they were using a “copy-paste” stamp.

They did not investigate, did not verify, did not reflect. Elena was neither a victim, nor a participant, nor a witness. Yet she ended up in a dark and cold shelter. And her son — in the hands of a system that did not understand (or did not want to understand) what it was doing.

Institutional Failures: Three Months That Left a Mark on the Child’s Health

In the video-medical report that Elena now publishes on her Facebook page, there is a phrase that makes you want to close your eyes:

“From birth, the infant was in limited hygienic conditions, without regular care, and under chronic stress.”

Behind this phrase hide days and nights:

of diapers that were not enough,
the cold walls of the place where Elena lived after her detention,
prosecutors who came, asked questions, demanded explanations — while the infant cried until he was hoarse,
medical examinations that were never carried out,
staff who did not know what to do with a newborn when the mother was taken away.

Miroslav grew up in conditions under which even an adult would have broken.

Procedures in Question: The Episode of the Four Vaccines

Before the flight back to Russia, when the lawyer secured their release, Elena was informed that the infant needed to be vaccinated, but she was not told it would be four shots at once. A doctor in Russia reviewed the documents and just shook her head: “This is not how it’s done. It goes against recommendations. It could have worsened the anemia we are observing now.”

Four shots. Three months of life under stress. The mother’s detention and lack of medical control. And now — treatment, tests, recovery. The price of someone else’s mistake: an infant’s health. A story from which officials look away, but from which people cannot look away.

When the scandal grew, the prosecution tried to change its rhetoric: “she was a victim, we acted to protect her.”

But how do you explain: protection with an interrogation in the delivery room under anesthesia? protection by depriving a woman of her own status? protection through conditions that doctors classify as “potentially torturous” for a newborn?

The scariest part is that they act as if Elena and Miroslav never existed all these months, as if their suffering could be erased with a simple administrative phrase.

Human Rights Organizations Demand an International Investigation

According to GHRD (Netherlands), Argentina violated:

the child’s right to health,
the right to protection from inhumane treatment,
the right of mother and infant to family integrity,
the right to fair treatment,
international standards for the protection of women in the postpartum period.

Experts are certain: what happened requires investigation, not cover-up, including by an international body. This story can no longer remain an “isolated case.” It is a test of humanity and a test of honesty for the Argentine judicial system. And today the system must answer.

A System Under Suspicion: Demands for Accountability and Internal Review

Prosecutors Arrigo, Labal, Revora, and Treviranus must be immediately removed from the case. Their actions— interrogating a mother under anesthesia, keeping an infant in dangerous conditions, illegally intervening in a family’s life — require not justifications, but accountability.

However, it is particularly alarming that the Attorney General’s Office refused to initiate proceedings against these officials, despite the facts and medical reports presented. Such a decision inevitably creates a sense of corporate cover-up within the Public Ministry, where some agents of the system end up covering for others, instead of guaranteeing the primacy of the law and the protection of citizens’ rights.

Speaking diplomatically, this decision looks like a refusal to consider the situation objectively and impartially, which undermines trust in judicial institutions and calls into question their willingness to protect the most vulnerable — including a newborn.

What Remains Unanswered: Violations, Abuses, and a Newborn at the Epicenter of the Scandal

This is precisely why American society should pay close attention to this case — it is already on the desk of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, a body that the U.S. actively supports and partially funds. If the violations are confirmed, it will be yet another test for the entire human rights protection system in the Western Hemisphere, a cause for which America has always stood as a leader.

An independent investigation into the Argentine prosecutors is absolutely necessary based on the facts of:

• numerous procedural violations,
• abuse of power,
• conscious harm to an innocent newborn child.

Only such an investigation can prevent similar cases from happening again. Only it can restore trust in the region’s justice system. And only in this way can it be proven that in countries America considers its democratic partners, human life is truly valued — even the smallest and most defenseless one, which is just beginning.