Ksenia Karelina and Arthur Petrov. Photo: Dmitry Chasovitin / Reuters / Scanpix / LETA; LinkedIn
The US and Russia carried out a prisoner exchange in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday, the second such swap this year, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
The Russian authorities released Ksenia Karelina, a dual Russian-US citizen who had been serving a 12-year sentence in a penal colony after being convicted of treason, in Abu Dhabi. In return, the US released Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen, who was arrested in Cyprus in 2023 and accused of exporting sensitive microelectronics, the WSJ said.
Karelina, 33, was arrested while on a family visit to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in January 2024 for a $50 donation she made to a US nonprofit supporting Ukraine.
After her conviction for treason, she was sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony and was also fined 300,000 rubles (€3,000). While Karelina admitted to transferring the funds to the charity, she never admitted her guilt in relation to the treason charges.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the news on X on Thursday, writing that “American Ksenia Karelina is on a plane back home to the United States” and saying that she had been “wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year”.
Russia released US schoolteacher Marc Fogel in February, during a visit to Moscow by US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, a move US President Donald Trump described as a goodwill gesture by the Kremlin amid efforts by both countries to improve bilateral ties as the Trump administration began its efforts to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine.
In return, Washington released Russian national Alexander Vinnik, the co-founder of the BTC-e crypto-exchange, who was awaiting sentencing in the US for conspiracy to commit money laundering.
