London : A former Austrian foreign minister who had invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to her wedding and danced a waltz with him at the 2018 reception said she has moved to St. Petersburg to set up a think tank there. Karin Kneissl, 58, announced on messaging app Telegram on Wednesday that her ponies, which she has been keeping in Syria, were taken to Russia on a Russian military plane.
Kneissl, from the right-wing Freedom Party, served as foreign minister from 2017 to 2019. She was repeatedly criticised in Austrian and German media during that time for her pro-Russia views. Her dance with Putin came just months after Russia was accused of poisoning former spy Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, with nerve agent Novichok in the United Kingdom.
Kneissl said in her post that she moved her books, clothes and ponies from Marseille to Beirut in June 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, after which she says she was "banished" from France. At the Eastern Economic Forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok earlier this week, Kneissl told Russian state news agency Tass that she had set up the Gorki centre a think tank associated with the state university in St. Petersburg.