Doctors only discovered the cause of the child's distress after the battery had already burnt a hole in the one-year-old’s tummy and left him with pneumonia and blood poisoning.
The incident happened in the city of Kropyvnytskyi in the central region of the country.
The boy, Artem Savchenko, was playing with a toy while in the care of his father.
The father was preparing food when the baby managed to take the battery out of the toy and swallowed it, according to local media.
Faced with up to two years in hospital – with each day costing £29 – Artem's family have now set up a charitable foundation to help with the bills.
Artem's parents called the ambulance when they realised that something was wrong.
The boy arrived at hospital in a critical condition.
A CT scan showed a small battery in his stomach, and by the time the doctors were able to take it out it had burned a hole nearly half an inch wide in the toddler's oesophagus.
The chemicals inside the battery had also burnt the toddler’s organs from inside and caused pneumonia and blood poisoning, local media reported.
Pneumonia is a bacterial infection which causes swelling of lung tissue.
Artem was transported from Kropyvnytskyi hospital to the leading Ukrainian children’s hospital Ohmatdyt in the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev.
His mother, Yana Savchenko, told reporters her son is currently in intensive care and his blood tests are improving.
She said: "Artem smiled for the first time when he saw his dad, who came from Kropyvnytskyi to visit us."
Deaths of infants from swallowing batteries is not uncommon.
In January a Brit mum called for public awareness after her two-year-old daughter nearly died after swallowing a battery from her car keys.
Top doctors warned parents in 2016 that button batteries could cause life-threatening injuries in less than four hours if swallowed, following an alarming increase in hospital admissions.
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