Arrest of dual US-Russian ballerina Ksenia Karelina is Putin’s middle finger to US: diplomat
The arrest of a dual US-Russian citizen over a measly $50 donation to a Ukraine-linked charity is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s middle finger to the United States – and the American government needs to step up, a former diplomat said.
“I do think he is giving [a middle finger] to the United States and to the Americans,” Bill Taylor, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo of the Kremlin dictator’s move to arrest 33-year-old amateur ballerina Ksenia Karelina.
“If she’s been illegally detained, then we go into high gear, we have people whose job it is to start figuring out how to get her back,” he insisted.
Karelina faces 12 years to life in prison since she was charged with treason last month under Article 275 of Russia’s Criminal Code after she allegedly donated to Razom, a charity that supports Ukraine’s army.
She is believed to have been detained on the same day that Putin sat down for a cozy interview with Tucker Carlson.
“He can’t tolerate any objection,” Taylor, who served under President George W. Bush, said of the Russian leader.
“Putin is more repressive, more oppressive to anyone there, whether they be American or Russian than any time in memory, going back to the Stalin times,” the former ambassador insisted.
Taylor’s warning was underscored by the chilling footage of Karelina being brought into court blindfolded and shackled.
The spa manager’s loved ones are “all in shock” over the arrest, her former mother-in-law, Eleanora Srebroski, told The Post Tuesday.
“She is just a wonderful soul. She would never do anything evil to anyone,” Srebroski said.
The White House did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for a comment on the arrest.
News of Karelina’s detainment also broke while questions swirled over the sudden, mysterious death of Putin’s main political opponent, Alexei Navalny, in a remote prison colony.
The outspoken former lawyer may have been killed by a punch to the heart, which was a “hallmark of the KGB,” activist Vladimir Osechkin claimed.
Putin famously rose through the ranks of the Soviet security agency for nearly two decades before launching his political career in the early 1990s.
