Ksenia Karelina, the American ballerina jailed in Russia, is only allowed to shower once a week, has no access to hot water in her cell and is forced to sleep with the lights on, she revealed in a heartbreaking letter to her boyfriend.
Chris Van Heerden told “Fox & Friends First” on Monday that Karelina’s letter has shed some light on the appalling conditions in which she is being held while facing a treason charge for allegedly donating just $51 to a Ukrainian charity.
“She told me she’s got a 6 a.m. wake-up call, [got] to go to bed by 10 p.m. at night,” Heerden recounted. “The lights stay on all the time, so she’s got trouble sleeping.”
Karelina is permitted to go up to the jail’s roof for fresh air, but the guards have been known to lock the door and leave the inmates in the freezing cold for hours, so Hardeen said his girlfriend has opted not to venture outside anymore.
He also added that he found the jail policy mandating showers for detainees just once a week “crazy.”
Despite the harsh conditions inside the Yekaterinburg detention center — 870 miles east of Moscow — the 32-year-old Beverly Hills spa worker, has managed to hold onto her sense of humor.
“In the cell where she’s at they have a little water sink and there’s only cold water, which she makes fun of because she’s an aesthetician, so she tell me the cold water is good for her face,” Hardeen said.
But some days are harder for Karelina than others.
“It’s a day-by day thing. One day she wakes up very hopeful and very positive, and then other days there is no hope,” Hardeen said, revealing that Karelina fears she will spend the rest of her life in a Russian prison.
In her letter to her boyfriend of four years, Karelina touchingly wrote: “I’ve got a little window in my cell and I can see the sun, and I know I look at the same sun you look at when the sun goes down.”
Hardeen, a professional boxer, admitted that Karelina’s poetic passage has had a profound affect on him.
“I can’t look at the sun now, because when I look at the sun I just think of her,” he said.
Hardeen said he spoke the previous day to officials with the US State Department and was told that the they still cannot get access to Karelina, a dual American-Russian citizen, more than a month after her initial arrest.
“They make it very difficult on the Russian side. They don’t recognize Ksenia as American,” Hardeen explained, referring to Russia’s official state policy that does not recognize dual citizenship.
But the boyfriend said he was assured that US diplomats are trying “relentlessly, every single day, to get closer to Ksenia.”
Hardeen is convinced that Karelina would only be freed in a prisoner exchange — and he said the goal is to have her name added to a list of other Americans jailed in Russia who could potentially be swapped.
That list includes Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Marine veteran Paul Whelan, who have been accused of spying against Russia.
On Thursday, a court in Russia rejected a petition by Karelina’s lawyer to lift her detention and replace it with house arrest.
Karelina, who has lived in the US since 2012 and became a naturalized citizen in 2021, had traveled to Russia in January to visit her 90-year-old grandmother — after reassuring Hardeen that “it’s safe there.”
She was due to return home to Los Angeles on Jan. 29 — but was picked up by the police two days before her scheduled departure, initially on a charge of “petty hooliganism” involving swearing in public and resisting arrest.
The woman was later detained by the FSB security service on suspicion of treason, which is punishable by up to a life in prison, for allegedly donating $51 from her US bank account to Razom for Ukraine — a New York-based charity that sends assistance to Ukraine.