A dual U.S.-Russian citizen has been sentenced to 12 years in a Russian prison for treason after authorities learned she donated just over $50 to a charity supporting Ukraine.
Ksenia Khavana, 33, sometimes identified by her maiden name of Ksenia Karelina, was arrested in February after travelling to Russia to visit her family. Khavana, a former ballerina, lives in Los Angeles and works at a Beverly Hills spa.
Her closed-door trial took place in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains, before the same court and judge that convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich of espionage. Gershkovich was released from prison early this month as part of a prisoner exchange between Russia and the U.S.
Russia’s Federal Security Service said the US$51.80 that Khavana donated was used to buy weapons deployed against Russia. She “proactively collected money in the interests of one of the Ukrainian organizations, which was subsequently used to purchase tactical medical supplies, equipment, weapons, and ammunition for the Ukrainian armed forces,” the agency said.
Meanwhile, Khavana’s supporters say she donated money to Razom for Ukraine, a U.S.-based charity that provides humanitarian relief to people in Ukraine. The charity denies it provides any military support to Kyiv, writing in a release that it is “focused on humanitarian aid, disaster relief, education and advocacy.”
During the trial, Khavana “admitted guilt in part,” her lawyer Mikhail Mushailov said. She admitted to donating the money but maintains that it was not her intent to transfer funds to “be used for anti-Russian actions.”
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Her lawyer says he plans to appeal the verdict.
Ksenia Khavana speaks with her lawyer standing in a glass cage in a courtroom in Yekaterinburg, Russia, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024. A Russian court on Thursday sentenced Khavana to 12 years in prison on a treason conviction.
AP Photo
In a televised interview with CBS, Khavana’s boyfriend Chris van Heerden expressed his anger that the 33-year-old former ballerina was not included in the prisoner swap that freed Gershkovich.
“There was a prisoner swap two weeks ago, and Ksenia was not on that list,” he said, adding that he had been pushing the American government to bring her home over the past eight months. “Ksenia should be home, and I’m angry, and I’m trying to hold my composure.”
Van Heerden said that Khavana made the donation while on American soil in L.A. way back in 2022, when the war between Russia and Ukraine first began. She was detained in Russia in February this year, two years after making the donation.
Khavana’s boyfriend revealed that he was the one who bought her plane ticket home as a birthday surprise. He was concerned about the situation in Russia but said Khavana was set on visiting her family. The pair travelled together to Turkey for New Year’s before Khavana continued on to Russia and he flew back to the U.S.
On arrival, Khavana was detained and questioned by Russian authorities for 12 to 16 hours, he said.
NBC News reports that Russian authorities learned of the donation after they seized her phone and searched through it.
Van Heerden says his girlfriend is the “most heart-warming, soft-hearted person you’ll meet. She’s a good person.”
“I’m not a begging man but I’m begging the American people to help me get Ksenia back.”
An undated photo of Los Angeles-based aesthetician Ksenia Khavana pictured in her medical scrubs.
Ksenia Leonteva via AP
Since invading Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has sharply cracked down on dissent and has passed laws that criminalize criticism of the operation in Ukraine and remarks considered to discredit the Russian military. Concern has risen since then that Russia is targeting U.S. nationals for arrest.
On Aug. 1, Russia and the West held the largest prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War. Included in the swap were Gershkovich and American corporate security executive Paul Whelan, both of whom were convicted of espionage charges that they vehemently denied, and U.S.-Russian dual national Alsu Kurmasheva, a Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe journalist sentenced to six and a half years for spreading “false information” about the Russian military.
Russia also released several prominent opposition figures who were imprisoned for criticizing the military operation in Ukraine.
— with files from The Associated Press
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