Ksenia Karelina walks with her boyfriend, Chris van Heerden, as she arrives at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on April 10. (AP/Alex Brandon)
Karelina, who is a U.S. citizen, was born in Russia and had been living and working in Los Angeles at the time of her arrest. She was visiting her family in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in 2024 when Russia's Federal Security Service – the country's top security agency – inspected her phone and found she donated about $50 to a U.S.-based charity that works to aid Ukraine, Fox Digital previously reported.
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President Donald Trump is expected to meet with Ksenia Karelina at the White House on Monday. (Getty Images)
"We really need to thank him personally. When the time’s right, she’d love to meet him and I would love to shake his hand for bringing back the love of my life. And I’m not into politics," Van Heerden told the outlet at the time.
"I was begging the Biden administration for a whole year to bring Ksenia back. About seven months I realized that’s not going to happen. They’re not going to do it for me. I had faith and I truly believed when President Trump came into power, he could do it and he did it," he added.
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Karelina's release follows the Trump administration striking another prisoner swap deal with Russia in February that saw the release of U.S. citizen and teacher Marc Fogel, who had been in Russian custody since 2021 when he was arrested for possession of marijuana at an airport.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-meet-american-ballerina-freed-from-russian-prison