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Russian-American female goes on trial for treason after donating funds to Ukraine

A RussianAmerican lady apprehended previously this year while visiting family in Russia went on trial for supposed treason on Thursday after authorities accused her of raising cash to send out to the Ukrainian army.

Ksenia Karelina, who was born in Russia but had actually developed a brand-new life as an aesthetician at a Los Angeles medspa after immigrating to the United States over a decade earlier, faces a sentence of 12 years to life in prison if condemned.

Her trial will be held behind closed doors, as is popular in such cases in Russia. Treason acquittals are uncommon there.

The court in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg published a. short video of Karelina sitting in a glass cage, using denims. and a green plaid shirt. She smiled faintly as press reporters snapped. photographs.

At least a lots Americans are currently jailed in Russia,. part of a growing list of foreign nationals who have found. themselves caught up in the crisis of relations in between Moscow. and Washington throughout the Ukraine war.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) apprehended Karelina in. January while she was visiting her moms and dads and young sis in. Yekaterinburg.

Her previous mother-in-law, Eleonora Srebroski, informed . in February that Karelina had taken a trip home around the New Year. after her sweetheart amazed her with an aircraft ticket.

She had actually ensured her boyfriend that Russia was safe and. that he had no factor to fear her traveling there, according to. Srebroski.

Initially arrested under a small petty hooliganism. statute, Karelina was later charged with treason.

Srebroski said Karelina had actually made a small contribution to Razom. for Ukraine, a New York-based nonprofit that sends out non-military. support to the country, gotten into by Russian forces in 2022.

Karelina, who remains in her early thirties, shown up in the U.S. in 2012 via a work-study program and was briefly wed to. Srebroski's boy. Her ex-husband has actually described her as a. fun-loving female who didn't care much for politics.

Karelina's social networks profiles include pictures of herself. and friends on the beach and on trips, but without political. messaging.

One image from November 2021 shows her in a long gown,. smiling and waving a small American flag, with the caption,. Citizenship.

(source: Reuters)