As freed detainees rejoice, boyfriend worries about US citizen still held in Russia
PHOTO CAPTION: Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina at court in Yekaterinburg on June 20, 2024. (Sverdlovsk Regional Court via Reuters)
By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As the detainees released by Moscow in a Thursday's historic prisoner swap flew to freedom, the boyfriend of Russian-American Ksenia Karelina was heartbroken that she was not among them.
Her alleged crime: donating $51.80 to a charity that provides humanitarian aid to children and elderly people in Ukraine affected by Russia's war.
Still, the prisoner exchange gave Christopher van Heerden hope that Karelina might be allowed to return to the United States after her closed trial in a Russian court next week on treason charges.
"I'm happy for the people, the Americans, who have returned to their families," van Heerden told Reuters from the Los Angeles apartment the couple share. "This makes me hopeful. At the same time, I'm heartbroken and sad ... she's not on the list."
Thursday's prisoner exchange was the biggest since the Cold War and involved 24 prisoners, including U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich and ex-U.S. Marine Paul Whelan.
Van Heerden, a 36-year-old South African professional boxer said he is optimistic because Russia has a "process" in which foreign detainees are first convicted before being considered for a prisoner swap.
"We've got to work through the trial," he said. "Ksenia's trial is next week. That's why she's not on the list, because we need to follow procedure."
Russian authorities have prohibited U.S. embassy officials from visiting Karelina in jail and have barred them from her trial that begins on Aug. 7, said van Heerden.
The U.S. State Department and the Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The pair met four years ago, and van Heerden was planning to propose to Karelina, an amateur ballerina and employee of a Beverly Hills spa, after she returned from a visiting her family in Russia earlier this year.
Karelina, 32, who emigrated to the United States in 2012 and obtained U.S. citizenship in 2022, was detained by the FSB security service in January after flying into Yekaterinburg, some 1,000 miles east of Moscow.
It is the same city where Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, one of the Americans released on Thursday, was arrested in March 2023 on what his employer and Washington called bogus espionage charges.
After arriving, she was singled out by Russia authorities when they learned she had a U.S. passport.
They released her after they 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 .
The FSB interrogated her for up to two hours during mandatory weekly check-ins and banned her from leaving the city, the website says.
'DEALING WITH RUSSIA'
Three days before she was due to return to Los Angeles, Russian authorities arrested Karelina on a charge of hooliganism.
On the final day of a 15-day jail sentence, she was charged with "state treason" for the donation that the FSB alleged would be used for supplies for the Ukrainian military, the website says.
Unlike those released on Thursday, Karelina has not been declared wrongfully detained by the U.S. State Department. Van Heerdon said he has been in contact both with the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
"You're dealing with Russia. You don't want to declare someone wrongfully detained beforehand and, God knows, we upset them," said van Heerdon.
"I just want Ksenia back."
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Don Durfee and Alistair Bell)
