SA boxing champ fights to free girlfriend charged with treason in Russia

This grab from a handout footage taken and released by Sverdlovsk Regional Court press service on 20 June, 2024, shows US-Russian citizen Ksenia Karelina standing in a cage at the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg. (Photo: HANDOUT / Sverdlovsk Regional Court press / AFP)

By Peter Fabricius

6 Aug 2024

South African Chris van Heerden was once the welterweight boxing champion of the world. But now he is engaged in a much bigger fight: to try to free his girlfriend from a Russian jail.

On Wednesday this week, Chris van Heerden’s girlfriend, Ksenia Karelina, a dual Russian-American citizen, will go on trial in Yekaterinburg, Russia, for treason. Her “crime” was to donate $51.80 in 2022 to a charity helping old people and children affected by the war in Ukraine.

Van Heerden (36), Meyerton born and bred but now living and fighting in Los Angeles, put Karelina on a plane to Russia on 2 January 2024 to visit her family there. He was nervous but she was not. His fears proved well founded for she was arrested on arrival at the airport in Yekaterinburg and first charged, bizarrely, with “hooliganism” and then, much more seriously, with treason.

I’m just a guy that grew up in Meyerton. I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m trying my best.

Van Heerden is praying she will be acquitted. But more realistically he is bracing himself for her to be convicted and given a long sentence. Then he will resume his political struggle to try to get her freed in a prisoner swap like the big one which took place between the US and Russia last Wednesday.

Van Heerden was happy for the release of the prisoners held by Russia. But he told Daily Maverick he was also shocked because US government officials had assured him they would only be released after the US elections in November. Then it would have been possible to include Ksenia if she were convicted and sentenced.

He feels he has been “screwed” by global politics. But he’s not giving up.

“I’m just a guy that grew up in Meyerton. I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m trying my best.”

Van Heerden was born and educated in the small town of Meyerton, south of Johannesburg. After school he became a professional boxer. In 2011 he won the vacant IBO world welterweight title, then retained it in fights against Argentinian Sebastián Luján and Briton Matthew Hatton.

“I had three world title fights. I won all three of them,” said Van Heerden, who along the way acquired the nickname of The Heat, presumably for his fiery boxing style.

SA boxer girlfriend treason Russia Ksenia Karelina, a Los Angeles resident, was arrested in Russia while visiting her grandparents. (Photo: Ksenia Karelina / Facebook)

But his dream had always been to move to LA – in part to prove he could make it away from home – and so on Christmas Day 2013 he got on a plane and flew to that city.

“I figured life would not be that hard coming over this side, still being a world champion. A young boy, a 26-year-old boy with dreams.”

The reality was different at first.

“You know, coming to America with no family, I knew no one. It was tough, man. It was a hard life. I wanted to come home so many times.

“But every time I wanted to come home, my dad, who was my biggest supporter and my biggest role model, would remind me why I came to America.

“So, the first five years in Los Angeles were very hard. But the last five years have been better because, you know, you find your feet, you find your people.

“Yeah, so it’s been a tough journey, man, but also a beautiful one.

And he is looking forward to obtaining US citizenship in 10 months.

Chris van Heerden and his Russian-American girlfriend Ksenia Karelina on holiday in Turkey in 2023. (Photo: Supplied by Chris van Heerden)

Chris van Heerden and his Russian-American girlfriend Ksenia Karelina on holiday in Turkey in 2023. (Photo: supplied by Chris van Heerden)

He was stripped of his world title in 2014 because he missed a deadline to defend it during his move to the US.

“I didn’t lose it because I got beaten,” he is quick to point out.

“But I worked my way back up all the way to the top and I fought again for the world title.”

He fought American Jaron Ennis for the title in 2020, but the fight was stopped because of an accidental clash of heads.

He met Karelina, an amateur ballerina and an aesthetician in a spa, in 2020 during the Covid pandemic.

“We had a short romance. But I messed it up like we always do.” It took him two-and-a-half years to make it up to her, and then “she gave me another shot”. They had just moved into an apartment together a few months ago and then this disaster struck.

He says Karelina (32) was born and raised in Russia and moved to America in 2012 when she was 19 or 20. She received US citizenship in 2022.

Her parents stayed in Russia, in Yekaterinburg. She flew there on 2 January because she hadn’t seen her family for several years. “She is very close to her family. And her grandparents are in their Nineties. She wanted to make sure she gets to go home and see her grandparents. You don’t know how much time they have left.”

Karelina had no reservations about returning to Russia. “Nothing at all. I did. I did, I did.

“But she didn’t. And she convinced me I had nothing to worry about. She convinced me that the war is not in Russia, the war is in Ukraine. That she was Russian, that she will be fine. And she had not a worry in the world.

She’s not a violent person. You’re going to tell me this poor innocent ballerina is going to be violent, with three or four men?

“She doesn’t watch the news. And I don’t either. And I wish we did watch the news.

“She was so excited to just go home.”

She was detained immediately on arrival at Yekaterinburg airport by Russian authorities – supposedly the notorious FSB security agency. “She was pulled aside for questioning. They interrogated her for between 12 and 16 hours. And then they confiscated her cellphone.”

Then they set Karelina free but she was not allowed to leave the city. She had to report to the authorities once a week.

“She was supposed to get back on the plane on the 30th of January, back to LA. And around the 27th, 28th, we had a conversation, and I asked her, I said, ‘what's going on? You know, you’re about to get on the plane. You still don’t have your passport. You still don’t have your cellphone.

“And she said, ‘Oh, everything is fine. They called and actually phoned me and said I can come to the station and sign some paperwork, get my phone, get my passport, because everything is fine’.

“And I remember that phone call. It was about an hour before, one hour before she actually went to go see them. And we were just both so relieved that it’s all over and she’ll be coming home and she doesn’t have anything to worry about.”

But when she arrived at the offices they detained her. “So they had tricked her.”

Chris van Heerden and his Russian-American girlfriend Ksenia Karelina on holiday in Turkey last year. (Photo: Supplied by Chris van Heerden)

This grab from a handout footage taken and released by Sverdlovsk Regional Court press service on 10 June 2024 shows US-Russian citizen Ksenia Karelina standing in a cage at the court in Yekaterinburg. (Photo: Sverdlovsk Regional Court press / AFP)

They charged her with “hooliganism” “They said she acted out, which is not true. If you knew my Ksenia, she is a sweetheart. She’s not a violent person. You’re going to tell me this poor innocent ballerina is going to be violent, with three or four men?

“In this world, not. It’s nonsense.”

So Karelina spent 15 days in jail for hooliganism. And then on the last day, instead of releasing her, they charged her with treason. They had been through her cellphone and discovered she had donated $51.80 to the charity, Razom, which supports elderly people, hungry children and the sick affected by the war in Ukraine.

“She had done this in 2022 as an American citizen in Los Angeles, so not even in Russia. As an American citizen, she’s done nothing wrong. And if you knew my Ksenia, that’s her. She cares about people. She loves people.

“She doesn’t want to see people suffer. She will give the clothes on her back. She will give the last penny in her pocket to people on the street because that’s who she is.

Read more: War in Ukraine

“So for that beautiful kind act to the human race, she was charged with treason and is now facing between 12 and 20 years in prison.

“As far as I know, everyone I speak to, and I’m speaking to a lawyer, says she’s going to be found guilty. And she’s going to go to prison.

“But there’s still a little part of me, I still hold onto miracles, a god of miracles, and I still pray every night that a miracle will happen and that all of this will be over. But it looks like she’s going to be sentenced.

“But that also needs to happen, the sooner that happens, the next steps can happen as far as the US government intervening.”

So it’s all politics, it’s all propaganda, it’s all games, it’s all just a chess match. But it breaks my heart because it’s someone’s life.

Van Heerden said US officials had assured him there would be no prisoner swap until after the US elections in November, or early in 2025. That would have given him time to make sure Karelina was on the list.

“So I was convinced, I was assured we have time and I was calm. I did everything we needed to do to make sure we got Ksenia on that list, only to wake up Wednesday morning and be shocked that Ksenia’s not on that list.”

The swap she missed was the largest between the two countries since the Cold War – also involving US allies like Germany – with a total of 24 people on both sides freed, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Read more: Americans freed alongside Russian assassin in biggest post-Cold War prisoner swap

Among the prisoners the Russians got back was Vadim Krasikov, who had been convicted in Germany in 2021 and sentenced to life in prison for killing a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years earlier, apparently on the orders of Moscow’s security services.

Van Heerden said he still hoped for another prisoner swap which would include Ksenia, but he did not know when it might be. But he added that if she was sentenced to prison, “the next step would be for the US government to now try to make contact with Ksenia”.

“Because as of today, Russia has not allowed the American government to make contact with Ksenia because they don’t recognise the dual citizenship” (ie, they regard her as purely Russian). Yet Van Heerden says that at the same time the Russian media is reporting that “we have a US citizen”.

“So it’s all politics, it’s all propaganda, it’s all games, it’s all just a chess match. But it breaks my heart because it’s someone’s life.

“And they’re destroying a beautiful soul, a beautiful heart.” DM

UPDATE: According to Reuters, Russian-American dual citizen Ksenia Karelina has pleaded guilty in a Russian court to a charge of treason, state news agency RIA quoted her lawyer as saying on Wednesday.

Karelina, who was not included in a major prisoner swap between Russia and the West last week, is on trial in the city of Yekaterinburg over a donation she made in 2022 to a charity supporting Ukraine.

Wednesday’s hearing was the first in her case since the August 1 swap involving 24 prisoners held in seven countries, which saw three American citizens released from Russian jails.

RIA said the prosecution and defence would sum up their arguments in Karelina’s case on Thursday and the verdict would be announced the same day.

Van Heerden told Daily Maverick: “We are waiting on the verdict. It will be out in less than 24 hours.”

Karelina was born in Russia but emigrated to the United States in 2012 and became a US citizen in 2021. The Los Angeles spa employee faces a sentence of 12 years to life in prison if convicted.

She was arrested by the FSB security service after flying to Russia to visit her family in Yekaterinburg at the start of the year.

Investigators brought the treason charge after discovering on her mobile phone that she had donated $51.80 to Razom, a charity that provides aid to Ukraine, when Russia invaded its neighbour in February 2022. The FSB alleged that the ultimate beneficiary was the Ukrainian army.

Razom said at the time of her arrest that it was “appalled”. The charity’s website says it supports a range of humanitarian projects, including the supply of first aid kits, wood stoves, generators, radios and vehicles to frontline Ukrainian medics.

It also helps Ukrainian children and vulnerable communities affected by the war, including by providing food, shelter, psychological support and clean water.

Additional reporting by Reuters.

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