The ex-husband of Ksenia Karelina, a dual US-Russian citizen facing a life sentence from the Kremlin for donating $50 to a Ukrainian charity, broke his silence to The Post Wednesday.
“It’s crazy,” Evgeny Khavana said from outside his home in the suburbs of Baltimore. “She must be going trhough a nightmare.”
Karelina, 32, an amature ballerina who works at a spa in Beverly Hills, was arrested last month in her hometown of Yekaterinburg for “petty hooliganism,” with charges later upgraded to treason, according to Russian media.
“I understand why she went,” he said. “She has parents over there, she went to visit her parents. It’s stupid politics. Politics.”
Karelina was paraded blindfolded and handcuffed as she appeared in a Russian courtroom on Tuesday, charged by the state Federal Security Service, Vladimir Putin’s secret police force, with making a donation of $51.80 to Razom, a Ukranian nonprofit based in New York.
Russian officials claim this money was used by the charity to further the country’s war effort against Russia, which invaded in 2022.
Karelina had flown back to the country of her birth in January to comfort her divorcing parents, but was arreseted soon after.
She was initially sentenced to 14 days in jail on Jan. 29 following a public fracas, according to the account of Russian officials.
“The young woman was using coarse, obscene language in front of other citizens, was behaving rudely and defiantly,” court officials told a local news outlet.
When Karelina filed an appeal the Russian court rejected it — and instead charged her with a new complaint under Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code, which was amended in 2023 to carry a prison sentence of up to life.
Russian authorities have clamped down on alleged dissent since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The US State Department said officials will seek consular access to Karelina, who became a US citizen in 2021 and is the latest American to be held by Putin’s internal security services. State Dept. spokesman Matthew Miller said this week that Russia does not recognize dual citizenship.
“We are all in shock,” Eleonora Srebroski, Karelina’s former mother-in-law, told The Post this week. “She is just a wonderful soul. She would never do anything evil to anyone.Knowing Ksenia, she would never do anything criminal.”
Srebroski, who is Khavana’s mother, said the two married in 2013, a year after Karelina arrived in the US on a work-study trip from her hometown in Central Russia. It is not clear exactly when the pair split.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby yesterday warned that Russia does not recognize dual citizenship and warned of the dangers of visiting the country.
He said: “If you’re a US citizen, including a dual national, residing in or traveling in Russia, you ought to leave right now if you can. Just depart immediately.”