Russia seeks 15-year sentence for US-Russian ballerina Ksenia Karelina
www.bbc.com
Ksenia Karelina pleads guilty to treason charge after February arrest for donating to pro-Ukraine charity.

Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina has pleaded guilty to treason charges after she was arrested for donating money to a charity supporting Ukraine.

Russian prosecutors are seeking a 15-year sentence after the security services accused Ms Karelina of collecting money that was used to purchase tactical supplies for the Ukrainian army.

She was detained by authorities in Yekaterinburg, about 1,600km (1,000 miles) east of Moscow after a family visit in February.

The sentence comes one week after Russia and the West carried out the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War, where 24 people jailed in seven different countries were exchanged.

Ms Karelina’s lawyer said the prosecutors’ request for a 15-year sentence in a penal colony was too severe as the defendant had cooperated with the investigation.

Mikhail Mushailov also said it was “impossible” for Ms Karelina to have been included in the recent prisoner exchange, because an exchange can only happen once the court verdict comes into force.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netMEnglish
    32·
    5 months ago

    This is not possible retroactively, and any exchange doing that would be quickly detected and not accepted by the merchant which is not under control of the government because they are based in another country. Edit: Basically for this to work, the exchange, the auditor and the merchant would need to be under full control of the hostile government and the system actively compromised before the transaction takes place.

    • jetAEnglish
      31·
      5 months ago

      We disagree on the primitives of the architecture clearly. To my (self stylized) reasonable opinion the primitives are such that I cannot recommend Taler to anyone where their spending puts their Life or Liberty at risk, such as the good Ballerina in this sad story.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.netMEnglish
        32·
        5 months ago

        I would be happy if you could point me to a way the good Ballerina could have been caught if they had used Taler for the payment, but that seems highly unlikely because GNU Taler privacy is designed around such an exact case, and if you were right the entire system would be fundamentally broken from ground up.

        • jetAEnglish
          31·
          5 months ago

          it is my assessment that it is fundamentally broken from the ground up in protecting people from central authorities, yes.