Alina Kabaeva is a former rhythmic gymnast who won bronze in Sydney in 2000 and gold in Athens in 2004 at the Olympic Games. She also has 14 medals from the World Championships and 21 medals from the European Championships. She eventually resigned from sports, became an MP in the Kremlin, and eventually joined the board of the National Media Group, the largest pro-Kremlin media conglomerate in Russia.
In 2008, when she was a member of Congress, rumors of her relationship with Putin began to circulate. Putin had an official wife, Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, and two adult children, but why should that deter a psychotic dictator? According to rumors, Putin and Kabaeva had four children together, which explains her abrupt disappearance from public view.
As a person who earns around $10 million per year from a pro-Kremlin media company that has been spewing Russian propaganda for years, she is just as responsible for the war in Ukraine as Putin and his supporters. She has a similarly distorted vision of the world as her tyrant lover. She has publicly attempted to acclimate the Russian people to sanctions after 2014, stating that “the worse it becomes, the better it is for us.”
Others believe she may be hidden in a bunker in the Altai Mountains, but the majority believe she is hiding in Switzerland to evade penalties. Nonetheless, there are a number of online petitions requesting that Switzerland examine if she is in Switzerland, why she is there, and whether she should be deported back to Russia.
Additionally, there are petitions requesting that the International Olympic Committee deprive her of her Olympic medals. These petitions are initiated by Ukrainians as well as Russians who reject Putin’s murderous administration. We can only hope that their petitions will be successful.
