The statement identified her as a “Los Angeles resident.” It was not clear how long she lived in California or when or why she returned to Russia.
The Federal Security Service posted a video of a woman wearing a beige uniform with a white hat covering her face being led by a masked security agent on several flights in a building in Yekaterinburg, a city located east of the Ural Mountains.
She was then shown in the photo, handcuffed, placed in a car and taken to the courtroom. A blurred video showed the woman standing in a metal cage in court. It was not clear specifically when the arrest occurred, but Russian media reported that the court hearing in the case took place on Monday.
The FSB statement said the woman had repeatedly participated in public protests outside Russia “in support of the Kiev regime.” Since the Russian invasion in February 2022, she has also raised money for a Ukrainian organization, the FSB alleged.
They were used “for the purchase of tactical medicines, equipment, weapons and ammunition by the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” according to the FSB statement.
The statement said that the woman appeared before the court, which returned her to a detention center pending investigation into the case.
The woman's arrest follows the arrest of American journalist Ivan Gershkovich, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal accredited to the Russian Foreign Ministry, in Yekaterinburg last March on espionage charges that he, his employer, and the Foreign Ministry strongly deny.
In October, Prague-based editor for Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, Alsou Kurmasheva, who is a dual US-Russian citizen, was arrested after traveling to her family home in Russia's Tatarstan region for a family emergency. Kurmasheva was accused of not registering as a foreign agent.
Russian treason cases are murky, with trials closed and evidence classified.
Natalia Abakumova contributed to this report.
