Since the beginning of the Ukrainian War, the White House has announced a series of sanctions packages against companies and people linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin: banks, state-owned companies, politicians, oligarchs and even the two daughters of the Kremlin chief have been punished.
This week, The Wall Street Journal highlighted, based on reports from officials linked to the US government, that one person had been removed from the list for fear that restrictions imposed on him would further increase tensions between Washington and Moscow: the former gymnast Alina Kabaeva, alleged secret girlfriend and mother of three of the Russian leader.
The WSJ says the former athlete was on a pre-list of sanctions targets, but a decision to withdraw her name was issued shortly before the list was sent to the National Security Council – the body responsible for advising the US president on to foreign policy.
The relationship between the two, according to the publication, would go beyond love life: Kabaeva would be one of the main beneficiaries of the fortune attributed to Putin around the world. The finding appears in a report on investigations into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, which culminated in the victory of Republican Donald Trump.
In 2008, while visiting Sardinia, Putin was questioned by a journalist about speculation that linked his name to the former gymnast. The politician, unsurprisingly, responded by criticizing those “who try to enter someone else’s life with erotic fantasies”. He added, “There is not a single word of truth in what you said.”
Kabaeva was retiring from the sport at the time and would soon be elected to Parliament by Putin’s United Russia party. In 2014, she would still be nominated for the presidency of an organization that controls the main pro-government media. The appointment saw her earn a jump from $140,000 a year as a member of Congress to $12 million at the National Media Group.
Putin was married to Liudmila Putina, a former flight attendant at Aeroflot and mother of what are considered the president’s only daughters, for 30 years, until 2013.
Since then, he has never taken on a new relationship, also amid a propaganda strategy that the Kremlin boss lives an arduous routine, focused only on work.
Still, US and European intelligence point out that Kabaeva would have given birth, in 2015, to a son with Putin, with the delivery taking place in a luxurious hospital in Switzerland, overlooking Lake Lugano. Four years later, she would still have had twins in Moscow – the WSJ points out that a Russian newspaper even published the news of the birth, without mentioning Putin, but the text was removed.
Kabaeva, now 39, was born in Uzbekistan when the country was part of the Soviet Union. At the age of 13, she was already participating in international gymnastics competitions and at 17 she won her first Olympic medal, in Sydney-2000. Four years later, at the Athens Games, she won gold.
Rhythmic gymnastics is quite popular in Russia, which made Kabaeva a national star. In addition to the Olympic awards, she has been on the podium dozens of times at world and European championships. In 2001, she was ordered to hand over the medal she had won at the Madrid World Cup after being caught on anti-doping – and was even suspended for a year.
Last Saturday (23), according to the WSJ, the gymnast made a rare public appearance at an exhibition in Moscow. On the occasion, she commented on the War in Ukraine and, with the “Z” mark in the background – a symbol of support for Russian forces -, said that Russian gymnastics would become stronger even with a move by the West to isolate the country.
