An American ballerina jailed for 12 years in a Russian penal colony described the inhumane conditions she faces inside the prison in a letter to her boyfriend.
Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American ballerina, was sentenced this week to 12 years in a Russian penal colony for donating $51 to a Ukrainian charity after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Karelina detailed in a letter earlier in the year how she's only allowed to shower once a week, doesn't have access to hot water in her prison cell and has to sleep with the lights on .
Chris Van Heerden detailed the contents of Karelina's letter to Fox & Friends First on Monday, going through what a day in the life in the prison is like for her. It's a harrowing experience, Karelina wrote.
"She told me she's got a 6 a.m. wake-up call, [got] to go to bed by 10 p.m. at night," he said. "The lights stay on all the time, so she's got trouble sleeping."
She does have some privileges — she's allowed to go up to the roof of the jail for some fresh air, but the guards reportedly lock prisoners out rather frequently, leaving inmates in the freezing cold for several hours. Heerden told Fox & Friends First that Karelina has largely decided not to venture outdoors because of that.
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Heerden said Karelina has held on to her sense of humor, though, which might be the only thing getting her through the conditions at the jail, which is located in Yekaterinburg, a city about 870 miles east of Moscow.
"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," Heerden said.
But the overall experience has been harrowing, Heerden said. Showering only once a week in the jail is "crazy," he said, but he said Karelina is taking it "day by day." He said, "One day, she wakes up very hopeful and very positive, and then other days, there is no hope."
He said Karelina fears that she might spend the rest of her life in a Russian prison. She touchingly wrote, however, "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."
Heerden, who is a professional boxer, said he's been working closely with the U.S. State Department to see if extracting Karelina is possible. He said they told him, however, that the Russians have made the entire process very difficult, stating that they "don't recognize Ksenia as American," since there's a Russian state policy that simply doesn't recognize dual citizenship at all.
Karelina is Russian-American — so, to the Russian government, she's just Russian. But Heerden said diplomats have been working "relentlessly, every single day," to access Karelina.
What it might come down to, the boyfriend said in the March interview with Fox & Friends, is a prison swap, just like the one that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan weeks ago.
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