Russian prosecutors have demanded a 15-year sentence for Ksenia Karelina, a Russian American citizen accused of treason for donating to a charity supporting Ukraine.
Karelina, who was not included in a major prisoner swap between Russia and the West last week that also saw the release of The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, is on trial in the city of Yekaterinburg.
“The prosecution requested a sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment in a general regime penal colony,” Russian state media quoted her lawyer, Mikhail Mushailov, as saying on Thursday.
She pleaded guilty, with the court press service saying she made a closing appeal to the judge on Thursday. The verdict is expected on August 15.
Karelina was born in Russia but emigrated 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 at the start of the year.
Investigators brought the treason charge after discovering on her mobile phone that she had donated $51.80 to Razom, a charity that provides aid to Ukraine, when Russia invaded its neighbour in February 2022.
The FSB alleged that the ultimate beneficiary was the Ukrainian army.
Mushailov said the prosecutors’ request for 15 years was too harsh because Karelina had cooperated with the investigation, including by voluntarily giving up her phone.
He 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”.
Razom said at the time of her arrest that it was “appalled”. The charity’s website says it supports a range of humanitarian projects including the supply of first aid kits, wood stoves, generators, radios and vehicles to front-line Ukrainian medics.
Russia has a number of Western and dual nationals in its jails, among them Yuri Malev, a Russian American, who was sentenced to three and a half years in June for social media posts allegedly mocking a patriotic ribbon 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 national working with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, was taken into custody in June in Moscow for allegedly failing to declare himself as a “foreign agent” and gathering military information for foreign states, an offence punishable by up to five years in jail.
Russia in the past has used the law to target Kremlin critics, but not usually foreign citizens.
Other Americans still held on a variety of charges include Gordon Black, a soldier sentenced to three years and nine months in June for assaulting and stealing from 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.
