“She’s just that kind of person,” Karelina’s former mother-in-law Eleonara Srebroski, 56, tells The Independent. “If somebody needs help, she will be helping. Whether it’s an animal, or a child, or a grown-up, she’s the one who is always opening her heart and her wallet.”
According to Russian human rights activists, Karelina – also known as Ksenia Khavana, after her first husband – was arrested on public order charges in late January outside a cinema in Yekaterinburg, before being charged with treason this month.
The country’s notorious Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed in a statement this week that an unnamed woman, later identified by Russian media as Karelina, had been “proactively collecting funds” for the Ukrainian war effort.
Now Srebroski has a stark message for the government and people of her former daughter-in-law’s adopted nation.
“If we do not do anything, she is going to die in jail,” she says. “She does not have any hope to get out, because they do not have any justice [in Russia]. And if we as a country do not help her to come back here, to where she is... we’re going to lose a beautiful person.”
Ksenia Karelina appeared in Srebroski’s life back in 2012, when she visited the older woman’s Baltimore home with Srebroski’s son Evgeny Khavana. The young woman had come to the USA from Russia on a work and travel programme, where she met Evgeny. As it happened, she and Srebroski originally came from the same region: the Ural mountains, of which Yekaterinburg is the district capital.
This story is from the February 22, 2024 edition of The Independent.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the February 22, 2024 edition of The Independent.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
England's extreme selection adds to changing Test tides
You may have missed it, but Test cricket is really fun at the moment.
Return to Galacticos model changes Real for the worse
Florentino Perez may have been keen to grandstand at Real Madrid’s general assembly on Sunday, but some of his stars have been more concerned with just standing still. Almost literally.
City squander three-goal lead as team self-destructs
At least it was not a sixth successive defeat.
ACCLAIMING NORA
As the reality of another four years of Trump begins to set in, Robert McCrum suggests Nora Ephron’s comforting world of witty prose and whirlwind romances can help us through
Disabled people are terrified of Starmer's welfare reforms
“People are just frightened. There is no sense that the state in Britain is going to support us if we get into trouble. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Trump will change his tune on tariffs once in power
According to Donald Trump, the most beautiful word in the dictionary” is tariff”.
We can't separate God from the assisted dying argument
As Friday’s Commons vote on assisted dying draws closer, the debate surrounding it, which has so far focused on issues about the terminally ill, pain, personal autonomy, the ethics of killing, and care, seems to have moved from respectful dialogue to becoming more fraught and personal.
Five rescued 24 hours after yacht capsized in Red Sea
Search continues for seven people, including two Britons
Pakistan authorities launch operation to clear Islamabad
Move follows clashes in the capital between police and supporters of Imran Khan which have left six people dead
World's oldest man dies at 112, 'surrounded by love'
John Tinniswood was born in 1912, the year the Titanic sank