Russian woman who lived in Ukraine for more than a decade faces treason charges after returning to Moscow to replace her passport

Authorities in Russia have opened a treason case against Svetlana Golovatenko, a Russian citizen who lived in Ukraine for more than a decade, after she flew to Moscow to renew her documents.

Golovatenko was born in the town of Severoonezhsk, in Russia’s Arkhangelsk region. For more than 10 years, she lived in Kyiv, where she worked as a manicurist and pedicurist. She held a Ukrainian residence permit. Her parents and brother live in Russia.

Mediazona, an independent Russian news outlet, learned that Golovatenko flew to Russia via Georgia on April 23 to replace her expired internal passport and re-register her home in Donetsk.

She was detained in the arrivals hall of Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. The next day, she was jailed for 15 days on an administrative charge of “petty hooliganism.” Police then filed seven more identical charges against her, and the cases went before several courts, including some in the Kaluga region.

A Moscow court handed down the last of these 15-day sentences on August 4. After that term ended, according to Mediazona, the authorities apparently opened a criminal treason case against her.

In June 2026, a court in Pskov sentenced Mikhail Loshchinin, a dual Russian and Belgian citizen, to 16 years in a penal colony on charges of “treason.” He had been traveling to St. Petersburg to visit his ailing father. According to his support group, Loshchinin was held in custody for a month and a half before any charges were brought. The treason case stemmed from a 2022 exchange of messages between Loshchinin and his Ukrainian ex-girlfriend, in which she asked him for money.