There, she has announced, she will build a think tank that the state university in Putin’s hometown has taken the initiative for.
Kneissl also said in a post published this week on the Telegram media platform that she brought her ponies – which were kept in Syria – to Russia in a Russian military plane.
Kneissl was Austria’s foreign minister from 2017 to 2019, and was already accused of doing business with the Russian regime. The criticism did not diminish when Putin appeared at her wedding in southern Austria in the summer of 2018. Pictures of him dancing with the bride were spread around the world.
Kneissl was non-partisan, but was nominated for the post by the right-wing populist party FPÖ.
Earlier this summer, she traveled to Russia to attend a major summit of African countries hosted by Putin. And then she stayed, in a village about 25 miles east of Moscow. According to his own statement, Kneissl has felt like a “political refugee” with a “professional ban” at home and has therefore stayed in Lebanon after an interlude in France. But now Russia will be home.