Dancing With the Stars pro Gleb Savchenko alleges in court papers that his ex-wife pushed weight-loss pills on their 15-year-old daughter without proper medical oversight, and a judge still left major decisions with mom in Hong Kong.
Page Six reported that Savchenko’s filings accuse Elena Samodanova of giving their daughter Olivia medication aimed at weight loss without checking with him first and without appropriate medical oversight.
The same court fight covers school control, visitation, and where the girls live. A judge ruled Samodanova gets final say on school enrollment and medical decisions when the parents disagree. The children stay with her in Hong Kong.
Savchenko, 43, is a longtime “Dancing With the Stars” performer who spent 12 years on the show and is not part of the current 35th season. Samodanova is 42. Their daughters are Olivia, 15, born in 2010, and Zlata, 9, born in 2017.
In the documents, he claimed his ex made disparaging remarks about their child’s “body, weight and appearance.” He also wrote that she removed Olivia’s bedroom door as punishment and gave the teen the silent treatment for long stretches.
He asked the court to bar conduct “harmful to their emotional or physical health.” He sought regular, direct, private, and unmonitored phone and video contact three times a week. He did not ask to move the girls out of Hong Kong.
He also asked that his custodial time not be shortened or interfered with unless both sides agreed in writing.
Samodanova filed her own claim that Savchenko was in contempt of court. She said he enrolled Olivia in a California high school without her permission.
The judge confirmed Savchenko’s custodial time during winter, summer, and spring breaks, plus an extra week of visitation if he travels to China. Both parents were ordered not to speak negatively about the other to the kids.
Representatives for both sides did not respond to questions about the latest filings.
The former couple married in July 2006, separated in December 2020, and finalized the divorce in October 2021 with a joint custody agreement. In 2022, Samodanova sought full custody and claimed Savchenko was “unavailable” to parent.
Over a recent summer, headlines followed Savchenko’s claim that Samodanova “abducted” the children and moved them to China. In a July emergency filing in Los Angeles, he sought temporary sole custody. He said they had agreed she would return after a year on a work project, then stayed another year, got engaged, and had a baby with her fiancé.
He alleged Olivia faced “years of... maltreatment” and feared her mother’s “temper and anger issues.” Samodanova told TMZ the eldest child was “thriving” in China and that Savchenko had not returned Olivia in June as agreed, keeping the teen in California.
"This is a wrongful international retention,"
she said of his emergency action. She also called it “a rushed attempt to bypass proper laws.”
Since the split, Savchenko has been linked to model Elana Bell and “Baywatch” star Brooks Nader. None of that changes the core problem in the new papers: a father telling a court his teenage daughter was given weight-loss pills without him being consulted, while decision power over medical care stays with the parent he is accusing.
When parents drag kids through international custody wars, the adults’ PR spin is not the point, a 15-year-old’s health and safety are.
