US-Russian ballerina jailed for 12 years after donating £40 to Ukrainian charity

Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina has been jailed for 12 years after she donated around $50 (£40) to a charity that supports Ukraine.

Ms Karelina, 33, had pleaded guilty to the charges last week. She was detained in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg earlier this year while visiting her grandparents.

The verdict was announced on Thursday after a closed-doors trial in Russia that ended last week. Investigators said Ms Karelina had sent money to purchase equipment and ammunition for the Ukrainian army.

Her lawyer, Mikhail Mushailov, told Russian media he would appeal the verdict.

Ms Karelina is a Los Angeles resident and amateur ballerina who became a US citizen in 2021.

She entered Russia in January but the US did not learn of her arrest until February 8. She was detained in Yekaterinburg, about 1,600 kilometres east of Moscow.

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Chris Van Heerden, Ms Karelina’s boyfriend, said he had bought her ticket to visit the country as a birthday gift. He said she was "proud to be Russian, and she doesn’t watch the news. She doesn’t intervene with anything about the war."

The organisation to which she reportedly gave money, the New York-based non-profit Razom for Ukraine, said it was "appalled" by her detention.

The conviction comes two weeks after American journalist Evan Gershkovich arrived back in the United States as part of the country's biggest prisoner exchange it had agreed with Russia in post-Soviet history.

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