The Westerners still held in Russian prisons

After a landmark East-West prisoner exchange this week, Russia still has a number of Western and dual nationals in its jails.

Here are the most high-profile cases.

This dual US-Russian citizen was sentenced on Thursday to 12 years in prison for “treason” after allegedly donating a little over $50 to a pro-Ukraine charity.

Karelina, a ballet dancer and spa worker, living and working in Los Angeles, was arrested in January while on a visit to Russia.

She pleaded guilty in court, her lawyer said.

This 48-year-old French national working with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Swiss-based conflict mediation non-profit, was detained on June 6 in Moscow. He has been remanded in custody pending trial.

He is accused of failing to declare himself as a “foreign agent” and gathering military information that could be used against Russia by foreign states, an offence punishable by up to five years in jail.

Russia in the past has used the law to target Kremlin critics, but not usually foreign citizens.

The US soldier was sentenced in June to three years and nine months in prison by a court in the far eastern city of Vladivostok, for having threatened to kill his girlfriend and for stealing from her.

The soldier was visiting a Russian woman he had met and dated while serving in South Korea. He was accused of beating her and stealing 10,000 rubles, around $113.

This American teacher at the Anglo-American School of Moscow, born in 1959, was reportedly detained in August 2021 for attempting to bring in 17 grams of cannabis and cannabis oil which he said was for medical purposes.

He was convicted of “large-scale” drug smuggling in June 2022 and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

A former US paratrooper, Michael Travis Leake, was detained in June 2023 and sentenced to 13 years in prison in July this year for selling illegal narcotics.

CNN reported that Leake, who fronted a Moscow-based rock band called Lovi Noch, had lived in Russia for many years.

The American was found guilty in 2022 of attacking a policeman while drunk in the western city of Voronezh and sentenced to four years and six months in prison. He pleaded guilty but claimed that prison guards had poisoned him with radioactive materials.

His sentence was later reduced to three and a half years on appeal.

In June this year he appeared in court on new charges of allegedly punching prison guards and an investigator.

This US-Russian man was jailed for three and a half years in June over social media posts allegedly mocking a patriotic ribbon associated with the Soviet army’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, which is also a key part of the Kremlin’s patriotic narrative.

Malev, who was placed in pre-trial detention in December 2023, was found guilty of “rehabilitating Nazism”.

The court said that Malev, who had been working as a security guard in New York, pleaded guilty to the charge.

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