A Russian-American citizen has just been released in a prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.
An L.A. resident, ballerina Ksenia Karelina, had been in prison in Russia for over a year after being arrested in early 2024.
After she made a payment of $51 to a Ukrainian charity, Russia’s FSB security service accused her of giving money to a Ukrainian organization…which the charity vehemently denies. The organization said the raise money for humanitarian and disaster relief.
She was sentenced to 12 years in jail.
The prisoner swap took place in Abu Dhabi in the early hours of Thursday, and it was US Secretary of State Marco Rubio who confirmed Ms Karelina was “on a plane back home to the United States.”
He added she had been “wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year.”
Reportedly, she was exchanged for Arthur Petrov, a German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023 over allegations of microchip exports.