By Merely a week or so after being asked by Tucker Carlson if he’d release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Russian President Vladimir gave an answer with action rather than words.
No.
Instead, Russia has arrested an American ballerina on apparently trumped-up charges that she is working for Ukraine because she donated fifty bucks to a charity.
The Daily Mail writes that the American ballerina faces up to 20 years in Russian prison.
Videos posted by a Russian news agency shows 32-year-old Ksenia Karelina being led into a courtroom in handcuffs and with her eyes blindfolded. It’s not clear when the video was recorded.
Karelina is a resident of Los Angeles who became a US citizen in 2021. Her social media pages are littered with photos of her smiling, loving life in the US. Last summer, she married her husband, a so far unidentified American.
She was arrested on the same day in January that Putin sat down for his widely panned interview with Tucker Carlson. The apprehension took place outside of a movie theater in Yekaterinburg. The initial charges related to swearing offenses.
Following her initial arrest, Karelina was then accused of fundraising for a Ukrainian military cause. She is specifically accused of transferring $51.80 from an American bank account to Ukrainian charity, Razom.
#Russia has taken another American hostage. The lady has been named as Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-born woman who obtained US citizenship in 2021 after she married an American man. She raised money for #Ukraine and is being accused of high treason. https://t.co/L4Y8bPCQ2r pic.twitter.com/bgNabaQPs7
— Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) February 20, 2024
The move by Putin comes after the alleged murder of his chief critic, Alexei Navalny, who had been held in one of the worst prison camps in the world.
According to The Express, a UK news outlet, “Alexei Navalny’s widow has accused Russian authorities of killing her husband with the nerve agent novichok, famously used in the 2018 Salisbury attack in the UK.
In a video statement posted to YouTube, Yulia Navalnaya said her late husband’s body is being hidden as Russian authorities wait for ‘traces of yet another of Putin’s novichok to disappear.’
She continued: ‘My husband could not be broken. And that’s exactly why Putin killed him. Shameful, cowardly, not daring to look into his eyes or simply say his name.’
‘And as vile and cowardly they are now hiding his body, they are not showing it, not giving it to his mother, and they are pathetically lying and waiting for the traces of yet another of Putin’s novichok to disappear there.'”
Both American frontrunners for the presidency responded to Navalny’s death. Biden said there would be “major sanctions” following the Putin critic’s death.
Trump stated that “the sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country.”
The former president was criticized by Nikki Haley for his response:
We need a leader with the moral clarity to call a spade a spade. Putin is not our friend. He is a murderous dictator who killed Navalny.
Why can’t Donald Trump say that out loud?
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 19, 2024
As for releasing Karelina, The Daily Mail claimed that the White House has been “scrambling” to respond to the arrest of another American citizen as it tried to “obtain more information on a dual Russian-American ballerina arrested by Vladimir Putin’s secret police on treason charges and is warning any U.S. citizen in Russia to leave the country immediately.
‘We are trying to get more information and to secure some consular access to that individual,’ White House spokesman John Kirby told DailyMail.com Tuesday in a briefing.
He also warned any American citizen, including those with dual Russian citizenship, to leave the country immediately.
‘I want to reiterate our very strong warnings about the danger posed to U.S. citizens inside Russia. So if you’re a U.S. citizen, including a dual nationals residing in or traveling in Russia, you ought to leave right now.’
‘Obviously it goes without saying if you’re a U.S. citizen or you have a US.. passport, and you haven’t traveled to Russia but you’re considering going, obviously urging you not to do that,’ he added.”
The president has not yet announced if being a ballerina is on par with playing basketball and being friends with liberal celebrities.
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