Russia and U.S. bring spa worker and tech smuggler back home in prisoner swap
International news via Reuters:
Russian prosecutors have asked for jail terms of five years and 11 months for four journalists accused of working for banned organisation of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the journalists said as they were led out of court, a Reuters witness said on Thursday.
The United States and Russia swapped prisoners on Thursday, bringing a dual citizen jailed in Russia back home in return for a Russian-German national accused of exporting sensitive U.S. electronics for use in Russia’s military.
Following are some facts about Ksenia Karelina and Arthur Petrov.
KSENIA KARELINA
Karelina, a Los Angeles spa worker who was born in Russia, was arrested in February 2024 while visiting family in Yekaterinburg after agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) inspected her phone and found she had donated about $50 to a New York-based charity providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
The FSB accused Karelina of collecting funds for the benefit of the Ukrainian army. The charity, Razom for Ukraine, has said its donations only go to humanitarian projects.
Karelina, who was born in 1991, arrived in the U.S. on a work-study programme in 2012 and settled in Maryland, where she was briefly married. She later moved to Los Angeles where she took a job as an aesthetician at a spa.
She was tried behind closed doors in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Urals. Karelina pleaded guilty to the treason charge in the hopes of receiving a lighter sentence, her lawyer said at the time.
She was found guilty last August and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
ARTHUR PETROV
Petrov, a dual Russian-German national, was arrested in August 2023 in Cyprus at the request of the U.S. for allegedly exporting sensitive microelectronics to manufacturers supplying weaponry and equipment to the Russian military.
Petrov worked for LLC Electrocom VPK, a Russia-based supplier of electronic components for weapons and equipment manufacturers supplying the Russian armed forces, according to court documents cited by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The U.S. says Petrov and two accomplices who also worked for Electrocom fraudulently procured microelectronics from U.S. distributors using a network of shell companies, based in Cyprus and other third countries, to disguise that the ultimate destination for the equipment was Russia.
Petrov and his co-conspirators imported more than $225,000 worth of electronic components from the U.S. to Russia in the course of the scheme, according to the Justice Department.
Following his arrest in Cyprus, Petrov was extradited to the U.S. and charged with multiple crimes including conspiracy, violating export controls, conspiracy to smuggle and money laundering.
