Alina Kabaeva is a former rhythmic gymnast who has participated in the Olympic Games and won bronze in Sydney in 2000 and later won gold in Athens in 2004. She also has 14 World Championship medals, and 21 European Championship medals. She then retired from sport and began working as an MP in the Kremlin and later on started working on the board of the National Media Group, the biggest pro-Kremlin media giant in Russia.
Rumors about her love affair with Putin started to surface around 2008 when she was working as an MP. Putin had an official wife, Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, and two grown-up kids, but why would that stop a deranged dictator. Rumor has it that Putin and Kabaeva have 4 kids together, and that’s why she has disappeared from public view recently.
As a person who’s earning around $10 million a year from a pro-Kremlin media giant that has been spewing Russian propaganda for years, she is no less guilty of the war in Ukraine than Putin himself and everyone who supports him. She clearly has quite a warped view of the world, just as her dictator lover. She has been publicly trying to get Russian people used to sanctions after 2014, and said that “the worse it gets, the better for us.”
Most believe that she is hiding out in Switzerland, trying to avoid sanctions, while others think that she might be hiding out in the bunker in the Altai Mountains. Nonetheless, there are a number of petitions online asking Switzerland to investigate whether she is in Switzerland, on what grounds is she there, and asking to deport her back to Russia. There are also petitions asking the International Olympic Committee to strip her of her Olympic medals. These petitions are launched by the people of Ukraine, and even those in Russia who oppose Putin’s terrorist regime. We can only hope that the petitions will work out in their favor.
