A Russian court has sentenced amateur ballet dancer Ksenia Karelina to 12 years in prison for treason for donating $51 (£39) to a charity supporting Ukraine.
Karelina, who holds American and Russian citizenship, pleaded guilty last week after a closed-door trial.
She has been living in Los Angeles and became a U.S. citizen in 2021.
Prosecutors sought a 15-year prison sentence. The Yekaterinburg court found her guilty of treason and sentenced her to imprisonment in the penal colony of the General Power.
Russia’s FSB security service accused Karelina of raising funds for a Ukrainian organization that supplies weapons to the Ukrainian military.
The Russian human rights activist said that while she was living in the United States, she made a transfer of $51.80 on February 22, 2022, the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The deal was discovered on .
Her lawyer, Mikhail Mushailov, said Karelina only admitted to transferring the money and believed the funds would help victims on both sides. He told Russian media she would appeal the verdict.
The Ukrainian charity Razom said earlier this year it was “shocked” by news of the amateur ballerina’s arrest and denied raising funds to buy weapons or ammunition. It is said to be a charity established in the United States that focuses on humanitarian aid and disaster relief.
Karelina went on trial in June in the same courtroom as Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was imprisoned on espionage charges but was arrested earlier this month. Freed as part of a major prisoner exchange with the United States and other countries.
The Yekaterinburg case was heard by the same judge, Andrei Minev.
Her boyfriend, boxer Chris Van Heerden, said last week the trial had been upsetting and nerve-wracking.
“For the life of me, I couldn’t put myself in her shoes or even imagine what she was going through,” he said.
Russian authorities have been cracking down on dissent since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with human rights groups saying more than 1,000 criminal cases have been opened against anti-war dissidents.
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree officially raising the maximum sentence for treason from 20 years to life in prison. A record number of treason cases were opened last year, according to human rights activists.
In July, Kevin Lik, a teenager with dual German-Russian citizenship, was sentenced to four years in prison for treason. He was one of 16 men and women released by Russia as part of a prisoner exchange between Russia and Western countries.
When Karelina was first detained, rights group Perviy Otdel said she was accused of swearing in public. But her initial detention for “hooliganism” was extended when the FSB charged her with treason.
Before her arrest, she had been working at a hotel spa in Beverly Hills and traveling to Yekaterinburg to visit her parents and elderly grandmother. Karelina was her maiden name and she was also known as Ksenia Khavana because she took her ex-husband’s surname.
