Alina Kabaeva: Putin's rumored girlfriend earns $10M a year while working as pro-Kremlin media boss, claims report
Vladimir Putin's rumored girlfriend Alina Kabaeva is earning millions annually while working as a pro-Kremlin media boss, reports, citing leaked tax records, have claimed. The 37-year-old reportedly gets a salary of ($10.39 million) £7.78 million for her job in a country where the average salary is $7852 (£5,867) annually. The Insider reported that billionaire Yury Kovalchuk, an oligarch close to the Russian president who is a shareholder of the National Media Group, pays Kabaeva.
As per The Insider, the former Olympic gold medalist’s 2018 earnings stated, “The National Media Group does not publish annual reports showing directors’ remuneration. The company has never answered media queries about it. Therefore, Alina Kabaeva’s income was unknown. Until now. According to the leaked Federal Tax Service’s database, the former sportswoman's official income in the National Media Group (NMG) was 785,400,000 roubles (£7.78 m). The Insider has verified this information.”
This comes a month after reports stated Kabaeva had disappeared after it was rumored she was the mother of twins fathered by Putin. However, the rumors were strongly denied. According to The Insider, Kabaeva, branded as "Russia's most flexible woman", met the Russian leader in 2001 when she was just 18. But speculations over their romance made rounds in 2008 when a newspaper owned by Putin’s former KGB spy colleague Alexander Lebedev mentioned it.
It has also been said that Kabaeva was behind Putin’s divorce from Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Ocheretnaya. Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko reportedly suggested that Putin left the ex-first lady because Kabaeva "put pressure on the president". But Putin has earlier said, “I have a private life in which I do not permit interference. It must be respected.” He condemned “those who with their snotty noses and erotic fantasies prowl into others' lives”.
Kabaeva has also never confirmed her relationship with Putin, but once said she met a man who "I love very much”, before adding: “Sometimes you feel so happy that you even feel scared." Earlier reports stated that when Kabaeva came for the 2018 Presidential Election, she said, “He will surely win.” While a Sun report said that three years ago, there were rumors that “Kabaeva was pregnant when she attended a girls’ gymnastics competition in Moscow wearing a loose-fitting red dress – which appeared to be hiding a bump.” “Putin is an intensely private man - he has been hiding his two adult daughters under fake IDs for years. Even now, though he talks about them occasionally, he never names them. If Alina gave birth to his children, her hiding away might be one of the strongest hints pointing to this. He is obsessive about the security of his family,” a Moscow source told The Sun.
Other than Putin, Kabaeva was reportedly once romantically linked with a married Georgian policeman. But the alleged affair frittered away in 2005 amid complaints of tabloid intrusion into the sportswoman’s life. Besides, she also had an almost nude photoshoot for Maxim and at the time, the photographer described her as “full of sex”. Kabaeva has reportedly been seen wearing a wedding ring, but there are no official records of her marriage.