The United Arab Emirates hosted a new prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia on Thursday, during which Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina was released in return for German-Russian engineer Arthur Petrov, who had been accused of espionage.

According to a statement from the U.S. State Department, the swap was successfully carried out at Abu Dhabi International Airport, with direct mediation from Emirati authorities. Washington described the operation as “the result of complex negotiations” involving the CIA and Russian intelligence counterparts.

Karelina, a dual Russian-American citizen, had been arrested in January 2024 while visiting her family in Yekaterinburg. She was charged with “high treason” for donating $51 to a U.S.-based charity supporting victims of the war in Ukraine, and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

In exchange, the U.S. released Arthur Petrov, a dual citizen engineer, who had been detained on charges of illegally exporting sensitive microelectronics to Russia, in violation of Western sanctions.

The exchange brought relief to the families of both detainees. Observers viewed the operation as a possible signal of thawing tensions between Washington and Moscow amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and various unresolved diplomatic issues.