Police issue statement after 3-year-old British boy vanished in Spain

Spanish police have insisted the search for missing British boy Oliver Pugh was ongoing – despite the country’s Ministry of Interior mysteriously deactivating an alert for the three-year-old.

Details of the disappearance emerged late last week after government officials published a photo of little Oliver on Spain’s National

Missing Persons Centre (CNDES) website which comes under the ministry’s remit. It said the blonde-haired youngster, based in Marbella on the Costa del Sol, had last been seen in the resort on July 4. Police subsequently confirmed they believed the boy’s mum, who is Russian, had abducted him and taken him to her homeland in breach of a court order banning him from leaving Spain.

Today the public appeal was taken off the CNDES website. Users trying to access the alert and photo of Oliver were met with a message in Spanish which said: “This alert has been deactivated or the URL is incorrect.”

Spain’s Ministry of Interior has yet to respond to requests for more information.

A spokesman for Spain’s National Police in Malaga said this morning: “The investigation is ongoing. There are no updates we can give you.”Police said on Friday: “The youngster and his father are British and the mother is Russian based in Marbella.We are treating this as a parental abduction. We believe the mother has left Spain and has taken the boy to her homeland which is Russia.”

A well-placed source said: “The mum and dad are separated and there was a court order preventing the mother from taking this boy out of Spain.”

It is not yet clear if a court has issued an international arrest warrant for the unnamed mum. It is not known whether Oliver was born in the UK, Spain or elsewhere. His parents have not been named.

The Ministry of Interior appeal via its missing person centre said while it was still online: “Oliver disappeared on July 4 2025. His date of birth is November 3 2021.

“He was three when he disappeared

“The place he disappeared from is Marbella in the province of Malaga. He has grey eyes, blonde hair, stands 85 centimetres tall and weighs 15 kilos.”

Police have not commented on local reports the boy’s dad didn’t report him missing until August 7, more than a month after he is said to have ‘disappeared.’

A pundit on Russia’s state media has reportedly said the youngster is “Russian” and demanded the Kremlin “protect the mother’s right” to be with her child.

Russian authorities have not officially commented on whether the child is in the country. But state media propagandist Vladimir Kornilov said over the weekend on Telegram: "It is suspected that she took her son to Russia."This, of course, is not yet a fact. But if this is indeed the case, it seems to me that we must do everything possible to protect the mother's right to be with her Russian child.”