Austria’s former foreign minister is living in a small Russian village after she said she “involuntarily” left her homeland due to “persistent death threats.” Karin Kneissl, who made international headlines in 2018 when she was photographed dancing at her wedding with Vladimir Putin, joined the board of Russia’s Rosneft in 2021 after departing as foreign minister in 2019. She stepped down in May 2022 after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is now reportedly serving as the director of a research center at St. Petersburg University. In comments to local media over the weekend, Kneissl said she had been forced to “leave behind her old life” and start all over, but that she was so far enjoying her stay in the village of Petrushovo in the Ryazan region. “I am booked in for another month, then we’ll see what happens. I don’t know anything about my future, nothing,” she said. Long criticized for her apparently close ties to Putin, she said the last time she saw the Russian leader was in 2019.
