A Russian court has sentenced amateur ballerina Ksenia Karelina to 12 years in jail for treason for donating $51 (£39) to a charity supporting Ukraine.
Karelina, who has American and Russian citizenship, pleaded guilty last week after a trial held behind closed doors.
…why would you be a Russian/US dual citizen? I thought both nations were not down with that, particularly with respect to each other, so I doubt it’s even technically legal.
And if you were, and on top you supported Ukraine, why on earth would you ever find yourself on Russian soil.
The only logical thing I can think of is raising awareness. Donate $50, good on you. Get arrested for donating $50? Now you have peoples attention
Edit: you say that as if she is stupid. This woman was brave enough to stand up for something she believed in, and didn’t hide while she did it. Good for her. I couldn’t do it
family
Abandoning citizenship usually requires jumping through hoops, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she had to return to Russia to file the paperwork.
In other instances, though, it’s actually really easy to inherit multiple citizenship, especially if one of those is American. You’re automatically an American citizen if you were born in the US or if either of your parents was an American citizen at the time of your birth. Additionally, anyone born to two Russian parents is automatically a Russian citizen, or if they were born in Russia to at least one Russian parent. So if a Russian couple who went to America after the USSR collapsed but didn’t bother renouncing their citizenship and then had kids, those kids would have both Russian and American citizenship. Alternatively, if an American citizen went to the Russian Federation and had a child with a local, the child would also have dual citizenship.
There could be numerous reasons for her to want to return to or be in Russia. Family is the first thing to come to mind
the US requires you to pay 3’000 USD to renounce citizenship
Well yeah, if you don’t you still have to pay income tax, regardless of your nation of residence.
the us is the only one of two countries out of 200 that makes citizens abroad have to pay taxes
Yeah I should have been clearer. I meant regardless of where you reside as a US citizen
TYL: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Americans
You can be an American with Russian ancestry, and you can even apply and get US citizenship as a Russian citizen, but Russia doesn’t legally recognise US dual citizenships at all. In fact, they only recognise it with two countries, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.
And if an American wanted to get a Russian citizenship, they would be required to renounce their American citizenship first - at least that was the case for a long time, I remember reading there being some work removing that requirement.
But you would still be seen only as Russian when in Russia.