Cell from hell
’ Russia agony
Ksenia Karelina, the American ballerina jailed in Russia, is only allowed to shower once a week, has no access to hot water in her cell and is forced to sleep with the lights on, she revealed in a heartbreaking letter to her boyfriend.
Chris Van Heerden told “Fox & Friends First” on Monday that Karelina’s letter has shed some light on the appalling conditions in which she is being held while facing a treason charge for allegedly donating just $51 to a Ukrainian charity.
“She told me she’s got a 6 a.m. wake-up call, [got] to go to bed by 10 p.m. at night,” Van Heerden recounted. “The lights stay on all the time, so she’s got trouble sleeping.”
Karelina is permitted to go up to the jail’s roof for fresh air, but the guards have been known to lock the door and leave the inmates in the freezing cold for hours, so Van Heerden said his girlfriend has opted not to venture outside anymore. He added he found the jail policy mandating showers for detainees just once a week “crazy.”
‘Sun goes down’
Despite the harsh conditions inside the Yekaterinburg detention center — 870 miles east of Moscow — the 32-year-old Beverly Hills spa worker, has managed to hold onto her sense of humor.
“In the cell where she’s at, they have a little water sink and there’s only cold water, which she makes fun of because she’s an aesthetician, so she tells me the cold water is good for her face,” Van Heerden said.
In her letter to her boyfriend of four years, Karelina touchingly wrote: “I’ve got a little window in my cell and I can see the sun, and I know I look at the same sun you look at when the sun goes down.”
“I can’t look at the sun now, because when I look at the sun I just think of her,” he said.
Van Heerden said he spoke the previous day to officials with the State Department and was told that they still cannot get access to Karelina, a dual American-Russian citizen, more than a month after her initial arrest.
“They make it very difficult on the Russian side. They don’t recognize Ksenia as American,” Van Heerden said, referring to Russia’s official state policy that does not recognize dual citizenship.
On Thursday, a court in Russia rejected a petition by Karelina’s lawyer to lift her detention and replace it with house arrest.
Karelina, who has lived in the US since 2012 and became a naturalized citizen in 2021, had traveled to Russia in January to visit her 90-year-old grandmother — after reassuring Van Heerden that “it’s safe there.”
She was due to return home to Los Angeles on Jan. 29 — but was picked up by the police two days before her scheduled departure, initially on a charge of “petty hooliganism” involving swearing in public and resisting arrest.
The woman was later detained by the FSB security service on suspicion of treason, which is punishable by up to a life in prison, for allegedly donating $51 from her US bank account to Razom for Ukraine — a New Yorkbased charity that sends assistance to Ukraine.