Hayden Panettiere Says She Was Unaware of Custody Agreement Until Daughter Was Already in Ukraine

Hayden Panettiere thought her daughter Kaya was only on a visit with her father in Ukraine when the actress realized the toddler would be staying for good.

The actress, 33, appears on this week's new episode of Facebook Watch's Red Table Talk, opening up to co-hosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Adrienne Banfield Norris, and guest host Kelly Osbourne about the custody of her only child, daughter Kaya. In 2018, amidst Panettiere's battle with addiction to alcohol and pills, Kaya went to go live in Ukraine with her father, boxing champ Wladimir Klitschko, from whom Panettiere split that year.

"[Kaya] was almost 3 and it wasn't fully my decision," Panettiere says of relinquishing custody to Klitschko. "In fact, I didn't even know it was happening until she was already over there."

"I thought this was an agreement that you came to that you felt it was best that your daughter be with her dad," Banfield Norris asks the actress to clarify.

Michael Kovac/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty

"I was gonna go work on myself and I was gonna get better, and when I got better that things could change and she could come to me and I could have my time with her," the Nashville star explains. "But that didn't happen."

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RELATED: Hayden Panettiere Says Relinquishing Custody of Daughter Was the 'Most Heartbreaking Thing'

"I thought she was going over to visit him like she always did," the actress says. "[Kaya] would go back and forth from me in Nashville and Ukraine, and then once she was over there, it was immediately 'I want full custody of her,' which was a shock to me.

"It was very upsetting signing those papers to give him full custody. It was like the most heartbreaking thing I've ever, ever had to do in my life," adds Panettiere. "In a country where her uncle [Vitali Klitschko] is the mayor and they are icons over there, it's a country where it's very male-dominated. There wasn't a heck of a lot I could do."

RELATED VIDEO: Hayden Panettiere on Her Relationship with 'Smart, Funny' Daughter Kaya, 7: 'She Still Loves Me'

In July, Panettiere spoke to PEOPLE about her relationship with her now 7-year-old daughter Kaya.

"Oh my gosh, that child came out of me," said the Heroes star with a laugh. "But she is smarter than me. And she's going to be taller than me!"

The Facebook Watch original series Red Table Talk airs Wednesdays at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET. New episodes stream weekly.