US-Russian ballerina reflects on release from Russian penal colony after year-long ordeal
"I'm really happy to be here, and I'm really happy to be back in America," Ksenia Karelina, a dual Russian and U.S. citizen, shared on Fox News' "My View with Lara Trump."
Karelina was detained in Jan. 2024 when she had traveled to Russia, her home country, to visit her family. The ballerina, who worked as an esthetician at a Los Angeles spa, had been accused of treason over a 2022 donation totaling $51.80 that she made to a U.S. charity supporting victims of the war in Ukraine. She was sentenced to 12 years in a Russian labor camp.
"Right when I landed in my homeland, that's when everything started. I was going through border control for the paperwork check. They asked if I had another passport. I said that I do, and they asked for the passport, and they saw the other passport is an American passport. They took both documents, and they say they're going to talk with me separate, and it was 11 hours of the first examination overnight," Karelina said.
Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022, after having previously taken Crimea in 2014. Russia is estimated to have suffered nearly one million casualties with 250,000 killed, and Ukraine has seen as many as 400,000 casualties total with 60,000-100,000 believed to be killed, according to a Feb. 2025 CSIS report.
Karelina shared that Russian authorities told her she was facing a lifetime sentence over the so-called "treason." The dual national said that, at first, the whole experience was surreal to her.
"You don't really realize it could be real," Karelina said. "You can imagine about prison just watching the movies or something, it's that, but more."
The ballerina said her parents were patriotic citizens of Russia, as she was as well, and it was devastating to her family that the country that they loved captured their own daughter.
She told Lara Trump that her family had to focus on supporting each other in order to survive the ordeal. Karelina said she drew inspiration from a book about a saint who survived in the desert in order to endure the endless days trapped inside the walls of her prison cell.
"You just need to survive somehow, and you just drag day to day… I had this phrase in my head… 'Just one more step, just do one more step, just one more step,' and that's how you drag through this, at first especially," she said.
Karelina said she and her boyfriend, Chris Van Heerden, wrote letters back and forth throughout her ordeal in the penal colony. She said he was her "hero" who never stopped fighting for her. The ballerina said that Van Heerden never expressed any doubt that she would be freed.
On April 10, 2025, her boyfriend was proved correct when Karelina was released in a prisoner swap.
After her release, Karelina met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, which she likened to meeting an old friend.
"Never in my life I would imagine being in the Oval Office shaking President Trump's hand. It felt so warm, it felt almost like stopping by at someone you knew for a while. He was very warm, he was very simple, very welcoming. He was funny. He joked right away… it felt overwhelming, and now I can tell more than ever if not for President Trump, I'd still be in a Russian prison, but he really does care about regular citizens," Karelina said.
The ballerina said she is now working to help free Olga Jezler, a 35-year-old United States permanent resident, who has been imprisoned in Russia for the last three years. She also expressed hope for an end to the war in Ukraine.
"People shouldn't die with no reason. I really hope everything's going to be peaceful soon."
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