A phone call beyond the cage
Dana White is used to deciding fights, not prisoner exchanges.
But the UFC chief found himself in the middle of a far larger contest when he used his relationship with Donald Trump to push for the release of Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American woman sentenced to 12 years in a Russian penal colony.
According to LowKickMMA, White told NPR’s Steve Inskeep that he made a call to Trump after being approached by a friend. What followed, he said, was a chain of influence that reached all the way to Vladimir Putin.
“They asked if I would talk to Trump and I said, ‘Of course’,” White said. “President Trump, I called him, and he got her released.”
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Asked how Trump had managed it, White gave a blunt answer: “He called Putin, I would assume.”
The case that reached the Kremlin
Karelina’s case had become one of the starkest examples of the risks facing dual nationals in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
She had travelled to Yekaterinburg in January 2024 to visit family, including her elderly grandmother. At the airport, Russian officials searched her phone and found a Venmo transfer of $51.80 made on the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The money had gone to Razom for Ukraine, a New York-based nonprofit that says it provides humanitarian support to Ukrainian civilians. Russian authorities treated the donation as evidence of treason.
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According to NBC Los Angeles, Karelina was detained during a family visit and later sentenced to 12 years in prison over the donation.
For a woman who had built a life in Los Angeles as an aesthetician and had trained as an amateur ballerina, the punishment was devastating. What began as a family trip became more than a year in Russian custody.
Trump, Putin and a deal in Abu Dhabi
The release did not come through a simple act of goodwill. It came through a prisoner exchange between Washington and Moscow, with the United Arab Emirates acting as mediator.
According to The Guardian, Karelina was freed in April 2025 as part of a swap in Abu Dhabi, with the United States releasing Arthur Petrov, a German-Russian citizen accused of illegally exporting sensitive microelectronics.
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Trump later confirmed White’s role, saying the UFC boss had contacted him about the case. Trump said he then spoke with Putin and that “they made a deal”.
That detail turned Karelina’s release into something more unusual than a standard diplomatic negotiation. It placed a private sports executive, a U.S. president and the Russian leader in the same chain of events.
White plays down his role
White has not tried to present himself as a diplomat. His version of the story is simpler: someone asked for help, he knew the one person who might be able to move the case, and he made the call.
“I didn’t do anything but make a call,” he said.
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Still, the call mattered. It came from one of Trump’s most prominent public supporters, a man whose friendship with the president stretches back years and whose influence now extends far beyond combat sports.
White said Karelina later contacted him by FaceTime after her release. He described her as “an incredible, sweet, positive human being” and said Trump and Putin deserved credit for getting her out.
A release with a political aftertaste
Karelina’s freedom was a moment of relief for her family and supporters. Her boyfriend, boxer Chris Van Heerden, had spent more than a year campaigning for her release.
But the circumstances around her case remain troubling. A small donation to a Ukraine aid group became the basis for a treason sentence. A civilian’s freedom appeared to depend not only on legal appeals or official diplomacy, but on personal access to power.
That is what makes the story so striking. A woman imprisoned in Russia over $51.80 was eventually freed through a deal involving Trump and Putin, after Dana White picked up the phone.
In another era, that would have sounded improbable. In this one, it reads almost like a map of how influence works.
Sources: www.lowkickmma.com, The Guardian, www.nbcnews.com
