Vladimir Putin is in the news daily as the war in Ukraine continues to rage.
But there is more to this controversial figure than his wartime leadership.
Though divorced, the president of Russia is far from single.
Who is Alina Kabaeva, Putin's alleged partner?
Alina Kabaeva is a former rhythmic gymnast from Russia.
She was born in 1983, and her parents are both Russian; her father, a former professional
footballer, is a Muslim Tatar.
Kabaeva mastered her demanding sport in childhood.
The International Olympic Committee confirms that Kabaeva debuted internationally at the
age of 13, and won her first title, in rope, in 1998.
She won a number of bronze and silver medals at Osaka in 1999, establishing herself as
a favorite for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
However, she dropped a hoop during one of her routines, which left her with bronze.
She competed across European and world tournaments over the next four years, collecting medals
and training for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.
There, finally, she won an Olympic gold medal.
She retired soon after.
The Russian government bestowed on her the title of Honored Master of Sport, and legions
of fans hailed her as "Russia's most flexible woman."
However, Kabaeva's sporting career had its own controversies.
She was stripped of her medals at the 2001 Goodwill Games after testing positive for
furosemide, a banned substance.
It was not a serious enough infraction to ban her from competing, though.
Maybe it was this taste for fame and controversy that led Kabaeva to leave sports for politics.
Upon retiring, Kabaeva ran successfully for the Duma, the Russian Federation's parliament.
She aligned herself with United Russia, a party that supports Vladimir Putin's presidency.
She served as deputy speaker from 2007 to 2014.
She later worked in pro-Kremlin media, drawing enormous salaries for chairing media outlets
like Sport Express and REN TV.
"The rumored love interest of Russian president Vladimir Putin is said to become the head
of the biggest pro-Kremlin media holding in Russia."
In that leadership role, she and her family seem to have acquired about $20 million in
property across Russia.
Kabaeva entered politics during Vladimir Putin's second term as president.
It was a period of energy and optimism for the United Russia party.
Putin had crushed a nationalist stirring in Chechnya and was preparing to invade the Republic
of Georgia in the name of its Ossetian minority.
And Kabaeva seems to have caught the president's eye fairly early.
The Moscow Correspondent, a newspaper, first reported rumors of their romance in 2008.
The fact that the Moscow Correspondent shut down almost immediately after running that
story may be a kind of backhanded confirmation.
In 2015, a Swiss newspaper reported that Kabaeva had given birth to a child in Switzerland.
The Kremlin denied the child was Putin's.
Putin and Kabaeva are not married, at least, not that either has acknowledged.
There is a small chance that they may have tied the knot in secret, though.
Kabaeva had the honor of carrying the Olympic torch at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
And it seemed, during the opening ceremony, that Kabaeva was wearing a wedding ring, a
band on the fourth finger of her right hand, as is customary for married women to wear
in Russia.
The New York Post published reports that she'd been seen with such a band in 2017 as well,
this time on holiday in Italy.
The official press office of the Kremlin has never said anything one way or another.
Putin himself, when asked, is not above losing his famous cool.
He barked at the Sunday Times:
"I've always had a negative feeling about people poking their snotty noses and erotic
fantasies into other people's lives."
Putin, of course, is divorced.
He was married to Lyudmila Shkrebneva, an airline hostess, for decades.
Their divorce came five years after his affair with Kabaeva was alleged to have begun, in
2013.
Putin is famously secretive about his personal life, so many of the details circulating about
the Kabaeva affair are based on hints and speculations.
However, it seems fairly certain that Kabaeva bore twins, probably fathered by Putin, in
Lugano, Switzerland in 2015.
And she may have two more children beyond the twins.
If that's true, they are likely also Putin's children.
All four are rumored to hold Swiss citizenship.
The last confirmation of Kabaeva's whereabouts was early in 2022, shortly before the Ukraine
War broke out.
The Daily Mail reported on footage of her dancing at a rhythmic gymnastics tournament
in Moscow, hundreds of miles from the Alps.
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