YEKATERINBURG, Russia—A dual Russian-American citizen, Ksenia Karelina, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Aug. 15 after a Russian court found her guilty of treason for donating money to a charity supporting Ukraine.
The Los Angeles resident, a spa worker, pleaded guilty at her closed trial in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, where her case was heard by the same court and judge that convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich of espionage in July.
The court said investigators found that on Feb. 24, 2022—the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine— Karelina had “transferred funds in the interests of a Ukrainian organization, which were subsequently used for the purchase of tactical medicine items, equipment, means of defeat and ammunition by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
Her supporters say she had donated $51.80 to Razom for Ukraine, a New York-based charity that provides humanitarian aid to children and elderly people in Ukraine. The charity has denied it provides any military support to Kyiv.
Karelina, 33, appeared in court in a white sweatshirt and blue jeans.
She wasn’t included in a major prisoner swap between Russia and the West two weeks ago that freed Gershkovich and 15 others from Russian and Belarusian jails in exchange for eight prisoners held in the West.
Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom on Aug. 15, Karelina’s lawyer Mikhail Mushailov said he was working to include her in a future exchange.
“We will certainly perform legally significant actions to start the exchange procedure and finalize it as soon as possible,” he said, adding that Karelina planned to appeal.
Mushailov said that while Karelina admitted she had donated the money, she “did not envision that the funds that she transferred would be used for these anti-Russian activities.”
Interrogations at the Airport
Evgeniy Smirnov, a lawyer specializing in cases of treason and espionage in Russia but who wasn’t involved in Karelina’s case, said she was unlikely to receive a lesser punishment.“A punishment lower than the lowest (sentence) has rarely been applied recently, and, as a rule, a guilty plea is not enough (to reduce a sentence),” Smirnov told Reuters.
Karelina was born in Russia and emigrated to the United States in 2012 via a work-study program, receiving U.S. citizenship in 2021. She was arrested by the FSB security service after flying to Russia to visit her family in Yekaterinburg at the start of the year.
Problems began for Karelina upon her arrival in Russia, when authorities learned she had a U.S. passport. Officers interrogated her and took her cellphone on which they found the 2022 donation to the charity, Razom, on her Venmo account, according to the website.
Three days before she was due to return to Los Angeles, Karelina was arrested on a hooliganism charge and jailed for 15 days. Just before her release, she was slapped with a state treason charge.
Her boyfriend, Christopher van Heerden, told Reuters this month that he’s been in contact with both the State Department and the U.S. embassy in Moscow about securing her release.
Unlike in the cases of Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was also freed in the swap this month, Karelina hasn’t been designated by Washington as “wrongfully detained,” a label that would open up diplomatic avenues to negotiate a prisoner exchange.
