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The Los Angeles aesthetician and former ballerina, who were released last month after more than a year in Russian custody, are scheduled to meet President Trump on Monday, White House officials told NBC News.
The scheduled meeting between Xenia Karelina and President Trump comes more than a year after the Russian Federation Security Bureau (FSB) detained a Russian-American in January 2024 during a visit with Russian parents and sister. According to a statement from the FSB at the time, she was suspected of “providing financial aid to foreign countries in activities that respond to the security of our country.”
Details of the meeting were not available immediately.
Karelina was 33 at the time and was sentenced to 12 years in a prison colony for saying that Russian legal organizations had given a donation of more than $51.80 from their US bank account to a Ukrainian grant charity on February 24, 2022.
The trading day was the same day Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
US authorities call the incident “absolutely skidic.”
Her release last month brought relief and pours of joy from family, friends and colleagues in Southern California. Karelina was born in Russia before coming to the US more than a decade ago, living for herself in Los Angeles, where she worked at the Beverly Hills spa.
The plane carrying Carreina landed at Andrews’ joint base on April 10th, where he was greeted by his fiancée. Speaking to NBCLA last year, Chris Van Hilden said in a post on X that morning that morning that Karelina was “free and on her way back to the world’s greatest country.”
She was released in exchange for a Russian German who had been jailed in the US for smuggling charges.
The FSB did not confirm the amount of transactions that led to her incarceration, but said the donation was “used to purchase tactical medical supplies, equipment, weapons and ammunition for the Ukrainian military.”
Karelina was sentenced in a closure trial in the city of Yekaterinberg, southwestern Russia.
Van Hyerden said the two spent Christmas together in Los Angeles in 2023 and visited Turkey for the New Year. He returned to the US on January 2, 2024, and Karelina traveled to visit Russian families, including her 90-year-old grandmother, he said.
In February 2024, Van Harden said that the problem occurred when Karelina arrived and was temporarily detained at the airport. She was released, but authorities continued her call, Van Harden said.
He said the two spoke for about three weeks, he used Karelina’s grandmother’s phone, until January 27th.
“She said, ‘I’m going in a few hours, I’m going to pick up the phone,'” Van Hilden told NBCLA last year. “And because it was the night here, I said, ‘I’m going to sleep so I’ll talk to you in a few hours.’ And that’s the last thing we talked about. ”
Karelina was born in Russia and was a double American Russian citizen. She came to the United States to study at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, according to the Associated Press before moving to Los Angeles.
When she arrived in Southern California in 2017, Carrelina worked as a receptionist at Ciel Spa, the SLS hotel in Beverly Hills, and in July 2021 she obtained US citizenship. She graduated from the esthetician school about a year later.
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