The Wall Street Journal claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin has three children with gymnast Alina Kabaeva and the United States considered imposing sanctions on her, but abandoned the idea “at the last minute”.

Until now, the topic of the alleged relationship between Putin and Kabaeva has been taboo, not only in the Russian media, but also in most Western ones.

The informational reason for the publication of the American business publication Wall Street Journal was the information that Kabaeva could have been sanctioned in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but was not included in the sanctions lists – allegedly in order not to anger Putin.

The BBC cannot independently confirm this information, but only retells this publication.

The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed American officials, writes that US authorities believe Kabaeva, 39 (actually 38), is a friend of the Russian president, with whom she gave birth to at least three children, and suspect her of hiding Putin’s personal wealth abroad.

According to the WSJ, Kabaeva remains a potential target of U.S. sanctions, but among officials discussing the move, there is an opinion that imposing sanctions on the Olympic champion would be seen as such a personal blow to Putin that it could further escalate tensions between Russia and the United States and prevent peace talks with Ukraine.

According to representatives of the US and European intelligence services, Kabaeva spent a lot of time in Switzerland. US officials with knowledge of the gymnast’s movements claim she lived in a high-walled mansion near Geneva.

The WSJ notes that Ukrainian authorities sent a letter to the Swiss government this month demanding that Kabaeva be banned from entering the country and her property seized, but Swiss authorities said they had no evidence that she was in the country.

As the WSJ recalls, Kabaeva’s name was first mentioned on the Kremlin’s website in 2001. In 2008, the Moskovsky Korrespondent newspaper wrote that Putin, who was officially married at that time, proposed to Kabaeva. Putin, according to the WSJ, “violently rejected” this information, and a few days later the newspaper was closed. Around this time, Kabaeva left the sport and became a deputy from the United Russia party, and in 2014 she left parliament and became chairman of the board of directors of the National Media Group holding.

Since about 2013, writes WSJ, Kabaeva and her relatives have acquired six apartments in Russia, two houses and land in the most prestigious places. Kabaeva and her family members did not respond to questions sent by email, writes WSJ.

Sources of the publication among Swiss, European and American officials claim that in 2015 Kabaeva gave birth to a child from Putin, and the birth took place in an elite Swiss clinic overlooking Lake Lugano. Then the media wrote that Putin did not appear in public for eight days, suggesting that he was with Kabaeva. The Kremlin then stated that this was not true.

In 2019, according to WSJ interlocutors among US officials, Kabaeva gave birth to twins while in Moscow. The publication draws attention to the fact that the news about this was published on the Moskovsky Komsomolets website, but was quickly deleted.

The US Treasury Department, which, according to WSJ sources, has already prepared a package of sanctions against Kabaeva, declined to comment. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to inquiries from the publication.

Putin has two daughters from his marriage to Lyudmila Putina (Shkrebneva), from whom he announced a divorce in 2013. The Russian president does not like to talk about his family, and the last photo of him with his daughters was published in 2002.

On April 6, the US Treasury imposed sanctions against Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova and Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova – it was them that journalists called the daughters of the Russian president from an official marriage.

In the fall of 2020, the Proekt publication (which was recognized as an undesirable organization in Russia and closed) wrote about a resident of St. Petersburg named Svetlana Krivonogikh, who allegedly was Putin’s girlfriend, received “smart gifts” from his friends and became a shareholder of Rossiya Bank. In addition, as the publication wrote, the daughter of the Crooked Legs, Elizabeth, “is incredibly similar to the head of state.”

The press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the publication about the Crooked Legs, said that he had heard of such a woman for the first time.

In world journalism, there are two main discourses on covering the personal lives of political leaders. The first says that this information is of public interest only if members of the family of prime ministers or presidents use their position to enrich themselves. The second is usually referred to as “yellow”: any news from the life of the leader of the country is interesting, even if his wife, relatively speaking, was seen drunk on the street.

Putin carefully conceals information about his family. But what one learns almost always belongs to the domain of the first discourse. One of his daughters, Katerina Tikhonova, heads the Innopraktika scientific foundation, which receives numerous subsidies from the state and government agencies.

As I was able to establish, together with colleagues on the “Project” recognized as undesirable, the mother of his alleged third daughter, Svetlana Krivonogikh, is a shareholder in Rossiya Bank, which the US authorities called the bank of the president’s inner circle.

The same is with Alina Kabaeva: she heads the board of directors of the National Media Group, the main shareholder of which is the same bank Rossiya. NMG owns several popular TV channels, including a stake in Channel One. True, after the start of the war with Ukraine, the information that Kabaeva works there disappeared from the holding’s website.

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