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On Thursday (August 15), a Russian federal court found Ksenia Karelina, a dual Russian-American citizen, guilty of treason for donating to pro-Ukraine charities and sentenced her to 12 years in prison.
The Los Angeles spa worker pleaded guilty in a closed-door trial in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg, before the same court and judge who convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich of espionage in July.
The court said investigators found that on February 24, 2022, the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Karelina “transferred funds to the benefit of a Ukrainian organization, which were then used to purchase tactical medical items, equipment, means of defeat and ammunition.”
She had donated $51.80 to Razom for Ukraine, a New York-based charity that provides humanitarian aid to children and the elderly in Ukraine. The charity has denied providing any military support to Kiev.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby called the sentence cruel and said the United States would continue to seek consular access and press for her release.
“This is pure retaliatory cruelty. We’re talking about using $50 to alleviate the suffering of the Ukrainian people, and to call that an act of treason is just ridiculous,” Kirby told reporters.
Karelina’s boyfriend, Christopher Van Heerden, said he was “angry and saddened” by the 12-year sentence and called on the U.S. State Department to declare Karelina “wrongfully detained,” a declaration that would make winning her freedom a top priority for the U.S. government.
“Why not make mistakes?” said Van Heerden, a 36-year-old South African professional boxer who met Karelina four years ago and planned to propose to her when she returned from a visit to her family in Russia.
“She faces 12 years in prison for donating $51 on U.S. soil as a U.S. citizen.”
The U.S. State Department advised Americans not to travel to Russia, saying it was again issuing a “strong warning” about the dangers Americans face in Russia and urging American citizens currently in Russia to leave.
In another development, a Moscow court said Thursday that another American, Joseph Tate, was being detained until Oct. 14 on suspicion of assaulting a police officer. He had been sentenced to 15 days in jail for abusing staff at a Moscow hotel, a charge he denies, and could face up to five years in prison if convicted of assault.
Expected communication
Two weeks ago, Russia and the West conducted a large-scale prisoner exchange, in which Gershkovich and 15 others were released from Russian and Belarusian prisons, while the West held eight prisoners, but 33-year-old Karenina was not among them.
She appeared in court wearing a white sweatshirt and blue jeans and sat calmly in a glass cage.
Her lawyer, Mikhail Mushaylov, told reporters outside court that he was working to include her in future exchanges.
“We will certainly take legally significant action to initiate the exchange process and complete it as soon as possible,” he said, adding that Karelinna plans to appeal.
Mushaylov said that although Karelina admitted that she donated money, she “did not expect that the funds she transferred would be used for these anti-Russian activities.”
Airport interrogation
Karelina was born in Russia and immigrated to the United States in 2012 through a work-study program and became a U.S. citizen in 2021. Her family and friends said she was not very political and were shocked by her arrest.
Problems arose when Karelina had just arrived in Russia to visit relatives at the beginning of this year, and the authorities learned that she had an American passport. FSB officers questioned her and confiscated her mobile phone, on which they found records of donations made to the charity Razom in 2022.
According to the website www.freeksenia.com, the Russian Federal Security Service interrogated her for two hours during her mandatory weekly reporting and banned her from leaving the city.
Three days before Karenina was due to return to Los Angeles, she was arrested for hooliganism and sentenced to 15 days in jail. Just before her release, she was charged with treason.
Read more by Euractiv
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