The Russian government has confirmed the deportation to the United States of U.S. citizen Sarah Rachel Krivanek, sentenced in August this year to one and a half years in prison for injuring her roommate with a knife in November 2021 during a dispute in their apartment on the outskirts of Moscow.
Krivanek, who argued that she had acted in self-defense, was granted bail on a promise not to leave the country, which she ended up doing in a confusing diplomatic incident whereby the woman was intercepted at Moscow airport with a repatriation letter.
The U.S. Embassy assured in comments to ‘People’ magazine that it was not aware that the woman, a 45-year-old Californian and English teacher, was forbidden to leave Russia.
The incident itself did not reach further significance because her roommate only ended up with a slight cut on his nose and asked the authorities to annul the proceedings against Krivanek. However, the woman’s arrest at the airport eventually led to a final conviction for the violent act in a prison in the central Ryazan region.
Now, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov has confirmed the American woman’s deportation, without giving many details. «Physically I have no idea how it happened, but the actual fact of the deportation I can confirm,» Riabkov told Interfax, without indicating that the deportation is related to yesterday’s exchange between American basketball player Brittney Griner and arms dealer Viktor Bout.
