Russia on Thursday released a dual citizen jailed for donating to a charity providing aid to Ukraine in a swap with the United States for a German-Russian citizen accused of exporting sensitive U.S. electronics for use in Russia’s military.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Ksenia Karelina, who was found guilty last year of treason by a Russian court for donating money to a U.S.-based charity providing humanitarian support to Ukraine, was on her way home.
Her lawyer confirmed to Reuters that Karelina had been released as part of a swap for Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen arrested in 2023 in Cyprus at the request of the U.S. for allegedly exporting sensitive microelectronics.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and a senior Russian intelligence official conducted talks for the swap in Abu Dhabi, according to a CIA official quoted by the Journal.
“Today, President [Donald] Trump brought home another wrongfully detained American from Russia,” Ratcliffe said in a statement to the Journal. I’m proud of the CIA officers who worked tirelessly to support this effort, and we appreciate the government of U.A.E. for enabling the exchange.”
Imprisoned German-Russian part of the exchange
Karelina left for the U.S. on a plane from Abu Dhabi on Thursday morning, her Russian lawyer, Mikhail Mushailov, said.
Karelina was working as an aesthetician at a Los Angeles spa when she travelled to visit family in Russia. She was detained in January 2024.
The U.S. Justice Department said last year that Petrov had participated in a scheme to procure U.S.-sourced microelectronics for manufacturers supplying weaponry and other equipment to the Russian military.
The Justice Department said that Petrov had formed an elaborate tech-smuggling syndicate that spirited sensitive technology to Russia’s military-industrial complex through a web of shell companies. Petrov was unavailable for comment.
Canadian-born former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan spent more than five years as a prisoner in Russia on what he and U.S. officials call sham espionage charges.
It’s the third notable prisoner exchange between the countries in less than a year. U.S. teacher Marc Fogel was released from a Russian prison in February during a visit by Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to Moscow.
Russia and the U.S. in the final months of Joe Biden’s administration finalized a large-scale exchange of prisoners, the biggest since the Cold War. The exchange saw American-Canadian citizen Paul Whelan, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Russian journalist and dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza released from Russian prisons.
Separately on Thursday, U.S. and Russian delegations arrived for talks. The focus, according to Moscow and Washington, is restoring the work of diplomatic missions after years of conflict, mutual claims of intimidation and even the freezing of diplomatic property complicated relations between the two nuclear powers, exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Ukraine is not, absolutely not on the agenda,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on Tuesday.
“These talks are solely focused on our embassy operations, not on normalizing a bilateral relationship overall, which can only happen, as we’ve noted, once there is peace between Russia and Ukraine.”
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