Ksenia Karelina is on her way home.
Over one year after the American former ballerina was imprisoned in Russia for “high treason” while she was visiting her family, she has been freed, CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed.
“Today, we welcome the return of Ksenia Karelina home to the United States,” he shared in an April 10 statement to NBC News. “She was unjustly imprisoned in Russia.”
The dual citizen—who immigrated to the United States from the eastern European country more than a decade ago—was released in a prisoner swap in the United Arab Emirates, Ratcliffe added. Her attorney Mikhail Mushailov also confirmed the news on Instagram, according to the outlet.
After being detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service in January 2024 in the city of Yekaterinburg, she was sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony after “fully admitted her guilt” during a closed trial, Sverdlovsky Region Court in Yekaterinburg said in an August 2024 Russian news release viewed by E! News.
Russian legal group Perviy Otdel said that Karelina had donated around $50 to a charity that sent aid to Ukraine in February 2022 on the same day Russia launched its invasion of the country. Her donation was also confirmed by the Los Angeles spa where she worked.
The Sverdlovsky Region Court didn’t say how much the 33-year-old donated but accused her of financing Ukraine’s army during her sentencing.
“Karelina, on her own initiative, transferred funds in the interests of one of the Ukrainian organizations,” the statement said, “which were subsequently used to purchase tactical medical supplies, equipment, weapons and ammunition by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
Following Karelina’s arrest, her boyfriend Chris Van Heerden shared more insight into her trip to Russia, where she went to see her 90-year-old grandmother. The couple celebrated New Year’s together last year in Istanbul and while Van Heerden flew back to California, his girlfriend decided to make a detour.
“She was like, ‘I’m going to be fine, it’s good. I’m Russian, I’m good,'” he told NBC Los Angeles last February. “This is also eating away at me a little bit because I bought that plane ticket.”
He said that Karelina faced issues the moment she arrived in the country, saying that she had been detained at the airport. She was released, according to Van Heerden, but Russian authorities held onto her phone. They decided to communicate through her mom’s phone for three weeks until two days before her flight back to L.A.
“She said, ‘I’m going to go in a few hours. I’m going to go pick up my phone,'” he said. “It was nighttime here so I said, ‘I’ll speak to you in a couple hours because I’m going to go to bed’, and then that was the last we spoke.”
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