Investigators have charged Ksenia Karelina with making a donation to a charity that provides aid to Ukraine.
Russian prosecutors have demanded a 15-year sentence for Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American citizen charged with treason for making a donation to a charity supporting Ukraine.
Karelina, who was not included in a major prisoner swap between Russia and the West last week that also included the release of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, is on trial in the city of Yekaterinburg.
“The prosecution has requested a sentence of 15 years in a general penal colony,” his lawyer, Mikhail Mushailov, was quoted as saying by Russian state media on Thursday.
He pleaded guilty and the court's press service reported that he had filed a final appeal with the judge on Thursday. The verdict is expected to be announced on August 15.
Karelina was born in Russia but immigrated to the United States in 2012 and became a US citizen in 2021. The Los Angeles spa employee was arrested by the Federal Security Service (FSB) after flying to Russia to visit her family in Yekaterinburg earlier this year.
Investigators filed the treason charge after discovering on his mobile phone that he had donated $51.80 to Razom, a charity providing aid to Ukraine, when Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022.
The FSB claimed that the ultimate beneficiary was the Ukrainian military.
Mushailov said prosecutors' request for 15 years was too harsh because Karelina had cooperated with the investigation, including by voluntarily handing over her phone.
She said she had pleaded guilty in the hope of getting a lower sentence and because “it was stupid in this situation to deny the obvious.”
At the time of her arrest, Razom said she was “horrified.” The charity’s website says it supports a number of humanitarian projects, including providing first aid kits, wood stoves, generators, radios and vehicles for Ukrainian medics on the frontline.
Russia is holding several Western and dual nationals in its jails, including Yuri Malev, a Russian-American who was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in June for social media posts that allegedly mocked a patriotic film associated with the Soviet victory in World War II.
He was found guilty of “rehabilitating Nazism” and has been in pre-trial detention since December 2023. Malev, who worked as a security guard in New York, pleaded guilty.
Laurent Vinatier, a 48-year-old French citizen who works at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, was arrested in Moscow in June for allegedly failing to declare himself a “foreign agent” and collecting military information for foreign states, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.
Russia has used the law in the past to target Kremlin critics, but typically not foreign citizens.
Other Americans still in custody on various charges include Gordon Black, a soldier sentenced in June to three years and nine months in prison for assaulting and robbing his Russian girlfriend, and Marc Fogel, a former teacher serving a 14-year sentence after being caught with medical marijuana that he said he used to treat pain.
