Former ballerina released by Russia meets with President Trump at White House

A Los Angeles aesthetician and former ballerina who was released last month after more than a year in Russian custody met Monday with President Trump at the White House.

Ksenia Karelina's meeting with President Trump came more than a year after Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) took the Russian-American into custody during a January 2024 visit with her parents and young sister in Russia. According to a statement by FSB at the time, she was suspected of "providing financial assistance to a foreign state in activities directed against the security of our country."

Video posted to the X account of Margo Martin, one of President Trump's assistants, showed the two shaking hands.

Karelina, 33 at the time, was sentenced in August to 12 years in a penal colony for what authorities in Russia said was "high treason" over what Russian legal group Perviy Otdel said were donations of just over $51.80 from her U.S. bank account on Feb. 24, 2022, to a Ukraine aid charity.

The transaction date was the same day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. U.S. authorities have called the case “absolutely ludicrous.”

The Office of Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs (SPEHA) posted a video Monday afternoon of Karelina speaking about her return to the United States. It was not immediately clear when the video was recorded.

"President Trump, I'm so grateful for you to bring me home," Karelina said. "I'm here with your team today and feeling overwhelmed with all the great feelings. I'm going to be home soon.

"I'm so proud and so blessed to be an American citizen today."

Her release last month brought an outpouring of relief and joy from family, friends and co-workers in Southern California. Karelina was born in Russia before coming to the United States more than a decade ago, making a life for herself in Los Angeles where she worked at a spa in Beverly Hills.

A plane carrying Karelina landed April 10 at Joint Base Andrews, where she was greeted by her fiancé. Chris Van Heerden, who spoke with NBCLA last year, said in a post on X that morning that Karelina was "free and on her way home to the greatest country in the world."

She was released in exchange for a Russian-German man who had been jailed in the U.S. on smuggling charges.

The FSB did not confirm the amount of the transaction that led to her imprisonment, but said the donation "was subsequently used to purchase tactical medical supplies, equipment, weapons, and ammunition for the Ukrainian armed forces."

Karelina was sentenced at a closed trial in the southwestern Russian city of Yekaterinberg.

Van Heerden said the two spent Christmas together in 2023 in Los Angeles and visited Turkey for the new year. He returned to the United States on Jan. 2, 2024, and Karelina traveled to visit family in Russia, including her 90-year-old grandmother, he said.

In February 2024, Van Heerden said Karelina encountered problems when she arrived and was temporarily detained at the airport. She was released, but authorities kept her phone, Van Heerden said.

The two spoke, Karelina using her grandmother's phone, for about three weeks until Jan. 27, he said.

“She said 'I’m going to go, in a few hours. I’m going to go pick up my phone,'” Van Heerden told NBCLA last year. “And it was nighttime here, so I said, ‘I’ll speak to you in a couple hours because I’m going to go to bed’, and then that was the last we spoke.”

Karelina was born in Russia and was a dual U.S.-Russian citizen. She came to the U.S. to study at the University of Maryland in Baltimore before relocating to Los Angeles, according to the Associated Press.

When she arrived in Southern California in 2017, Karelina worked as a receptionist at Ciel Spa at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills and obtained her U.S. citizenship in July 2021, according to a website maintained by supporters of Karelina who advocated for her release. She graduated from aesthetician school about a year later.