A Russian court docket has sentenced novice ballerina Ksenia Karelina to 12 years in jail for treason for donating $51 (£39) to a charity supporting Ukraine.
Karelina, who has American and Russian citizenship, pleaded responsible final week after a trial held behind closed doorways.
She had been dwelling in Los Angeles and have become a US citizen in 2021. She was arrested throughout a household go to final January in Yekaterinburg, about 1,600km (1,000 miles) east of Moscow.
Prosecutors had sought a 15-year jail time period. The court docket in Yekaterinburg discovered her responsible of excessive treason and sentenced her to imprisonment in a normal regime penal colony.
Karelina had been accused by Russia’s FSB safety service of elevating cash for a Ukrainian organisation offering arms to the Ukrainian army.
The charity, Razom, stated it was “appalled” to listen to of the novice ballerina’s arrest.
She went on trial in June in the identical court docket as Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Avenue Journal reporter who was jailed for espionage however freed earlier this month as a part of a serious prisoner swap with the US and different international locations.
Her boyfriend, boxer Chris van Heerden, stated final week that the trial had been upsetting and nerve-wracking.
“I couldn’t for the lifetime of me put myself in her footwear and simply even think about what she goes by way of,” he stated.
