The Times - UK (2020-11-26)

the times | Thursday November 26 2020 1GM 35

been charged. “I believe it is our moral

responsibility to take back our citizens

who went to join Isis,” John Demers, the

US assistant attorney-general for

national security, told The Times.

“Those who pose a threat: that threat

should be neutralised. Those who don’t

pose a threat, like the children, should

be returned home to a place they can

reacclimatise to a liberal democracy.

Leaving them there in camps will most

likely expose them to continued radi-

calisation,” he said.

Mr Demers has overseen the repatri-

ation and prosecution of US citizens

from Syria, as well as the extradition

and indictment of Alexanda Kotey and

El Shafee Elsheikh, British members of

the “Beatles” Isis cell. “We are willing to

work with those European countries if

they want help in transferring their citi-

zens back,” he added.

French officials have confirmed that

their intelligence services are hunting

The World at Five

Retreating Armenians

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Kremlin-linked Bank Rossiya and a

swathe of real estate, including stakes in

a ski resort. Her business and property

portfolio is now worth an estimated

£75 million, Project said.

Although Elizaveta’s father was not

indicated on her birth certificate, her

patronymic, derived from the father’s

name, is Vladimirovna.

Hassan Ugail, the head of the Centre

for Visual Computing at the University

of Bradford, told Project that Elizaveta

bears an extremely close resemblance

to Mr Putin. “They may be related,” he

told the website after studying social

media images. Project said the likeness

was “phenomenal”.

Ms Krivonogikh has not commented

on the report and her daughter is be-

lieved to have deleted all social media

posts in which her face was visible.

Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokes-

man, said he had not heard of Ms Kriv-

onogikh. Mikhail Zelenskiy, an opposi-

tion journalist, wrote on Twitter: “No

one cares if Peskov knows [her]. He was

asked if Putin knows her.”

The National Media Group was ap-

proached for comment.

“snotty noses and erotic fantasies”. Mr

Putin and Ms Kabaeva met in 2001,

when she was 18. The Kremlin has not

commented on reports that Ms Kabae-

va gave birth to twins last year.

Mr Putin is likely to be angered by

another report yesterday alleging he

may have fathered an illegitimate

daughter during his first presidential

term. The Project opposition website

detailed a turnaround in fortunes

for Svetlana Krivonogikh, a resi-

dent of St Petersburg, Mr Pu-

tin’s hometown. Ms Krivono-

gikh, whose surname trans-

lates as Bow-Legged, is a

former cleaner who lived in a

cramped communal flat

until her alleged relation-

ship with Mr Putin began

in the late 1990s, it said.

She gave birth to a daugh-

ter, Elizaveta, in 2003.

Ms Krivonogikh has

since received shares in the

how to hate

Hayat Boumedienne, among France’s

most wanted terrorists, whose partner,

Amedy Coulibaly, was one of the perpe-

trators of the January 2015 attacks in

Paris. Plausible intelligence reports

suggest that she was one of 13 French

female jihadists to have escaped from

al-Hawl. At least 750 foreign Isis-linked

women and children, including French,

Germans and Belgians, escaped from a

third camp, Ain Issa, in October last

year.

At least six British women are

thought to have escaped al-Hawl. Some

have disappeared in the Syrian city of

Idlib, but one, Samia Hussein, 25,

arrived back in Britain in February.

Mr Demers said: “Europe should

realise that if those folks get out of SDF

custody, if those kids grow up radical-

ised... they can get to Europe a lot fast-

er than they can get here.”

Britain and its allies should repatriate

defectors, leading article, page 33

Putin ‘girlfriend’ paid £7.7m

a year to run media group

A former Olympic gymnastics cham-

pion rumoured to be in a relationship

with President Putin was paid an

annual salary of 785 million roubles

(£7.7 million) after being handed con-

trol of a pro-Kremlin media group, a re-

port has said.

Alina Kabaeva, 37, was named head

of the National Media Group in 2014

after six years as an MP in Mr Putin’s

ruling United Russia party. Although

Ms Kabaeva, who is often called the

“secret first lady”, had hosted a televi-

sion chat show entitled Steps to Success,

she was not known to have had any ex-

perience in media management when

she was appointed to the post.

The Insider, the Russian investiga-

tive journalism website that reported

Ms Kabaeva’s earnings, based its figures

on leaked tax records for 2018. Her

salary, it said, was about seven times

higher than those of executives at Gaz-

prom, the Russian state gas company.

The average annual salary in Russia

last year was less than £5,000. “How did

it come about that a gymnast with ex-

perience of working with a ball and a

hoop became the head of Russia’s larg-

est media holding?” The Insider asked.

Critics accuse the Kremlin of giving

lucrative contracts and highly paid

posts to people linked to the political

elite. The National Media Group, a tel-

evision, radio and print empire, is

controlled by Yury Kovalchuk, a bil-

lionaire who has been called “Putin’s

banker”. It has shares in Channel

One, the main state television sta-

tion, and Sport Express, a leading

newspaper, among others.

Mr Putin, 68, divorced his

wife Lyudmila in 2013. He is

fiercely protective of his

private life and once

described reports

that he was romanti-

cally involved with

Ms Kabaeva as

being written by

journalists with

Russia

Marc Bennetts Moscow

DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Critical Clooney gets under Orban’s skin

George Clooney has been lambasted by

pro-government media in Hungary

after he accused the country’s prime

minister of spreading hate and being a

harbinger of an apocalyptic future.

Politicians from the ruling Fidesz

party denounced the film star as an

“imbecile” and an “impostor”. Govern-

ment-friendly newspapers suggested

that the actor was a sinister mouthpiece

for the Hungarian-American liberal

financier George Soros.

The origins of the spat lie in a video

interview in which Clooney, 59, dis-

cussed the film The Midnight Sky, to be

released on Netflix at Christmas, in

which he plays a scientist who believes

he is the only person left alive on Earth

after a disaster.

Clooney said that right-wing populist

leaders such as President Bolsonaro of

should not be treated as a “global polit-

ical oracle”. Tamas Deutsch, an MEP

and one of the founding members of Fi-

desz, called Clooney an “American im-

postor talking bullshit about [our]

homeland”.

Origo, a website close to Fidesz, used

a photograph of the actor with one of

Mr Soros’s sons, which led to a sugges-

tion that Clooney was a puppet for the

philanthropist. In response Clooney

made a statement praising the older Mr

Soros but denying that he was under

the financier’s influence.

“Orban’s propaganda machine is ly-

ing,” he said, according to Telex, an in-

dependent Hungarian news outlet.

“As for my earlier remarks, I would be

ashamed not to speak out publicly

against the kind of authoritarianism

with which the Orban regime controls

the media, subjects companies to

draconian tax rules and silences the

free press.”

Brazil and Viktor Orban, the Hungari-

an prime minister, were mobilising

“hate and anger” in a way that could

lead to a similar catastrophe.

“Go to Bolsonaro in Brazil, or Orban

in Hungary. Look around: lots of anger

and hate,” Clooney told GQ magazine.

“[The film] takes place in 2049. If you

played it out this could very well be

what our reality is if that kind of hate is

allowed to fester.”

Mr Orban, 57, has taken what he re-

fers to as an “illiberal democratic” turn

since the start of his second stint as

prime minister in 2010. He has charac-

terised migrants from the Middle East

and North Africa as “Muslim invaders”

and curbed the rights of gay and trans-

gender people.

When Clooney’s interview was found

by a Hungarian news website the reac-

tion was strident. Tamas Menczer, the

Orban government’s chief foreign

policy spokesman, said that the actor

Hungary

Oliver Moody Berlin

Svetlana

Krivonogikh

Alina

Kabaeva, 37

Yekaterina, 34

an accomplished

rock’n’roll

dancer

Maria, 35

an endocrinologist. She

gave birth to a daughter in

2016 according to reports

Vladimir

Putin, 68 Lyudmila Putin, 62

The couple divorced

in 2013. She married

Artur Ocheretny,

a businessman

20 years her junior

in 2015

Married

The ‘mistress’ 1983

The cleaner

Former wife

Daughters

Daughter?

Twins?

An Olympic gymnast, she is

reported to be in a

relationship with Mr Putin.

She is said to have given

birth to twins last year

The Project

website said a

woman named

Svetlana

Krivonogikh may

have given birth to Mr Putin’s

daughter, Elizaveta, in 2003

Putin has confirmed he has grandchildren,

but has given no other details

Vladimir Putin’s family tree

Alina Kabaeva, a former

gymnastics champion,

met Mr Putin in 2001