“I’m so sorry that you have to go through this now. I’m so, so sorry,” Ksenia Karelina sent in an email to her boyfriend Chris Van Heerden after her arrest.
Ksenia Karelina, a 33-year-old woman who lives in Los Angeles, was arrested in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg for allegedly “providing financial assistance to a foreign state in activities directed against Russia security.”
The only contact Van Heerden has had with his girlfriend Ksenia Khavana since her detention in Russia is via letters, which he says go through vetting protocols.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) is trying to keep tabs on everyone with an American passport who comes to Russia, according to Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov.