‘Your father is murderer!’ Protesters hold demo outside the London flat of the ‘stepdaughter’ of Russia’s war-mongering minister Sergei Lavrov as campaigners call for her to be sanctioned
- Angry crowds and campaigners have called on Polina Kovaleva to be sanctioned
- The 26-year-old is the daughter Lavrov’s alleged mistress, Svetlana Polyakova
- The Russian Foreign Minister is one of President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies
- Activists say family members of Putin’s inner circle need to be targeted as well
- Polina paid £4.4m for her Kensington flat with no mortgage when she was 21
Angry protesters have gathered outside the London flat of the stepdaughter of warmongering Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
Polina Kovaleva, has been living a life of luxury in her £4.4 million Kensington property, much to the disgust of people protesting her father’s involvement in the war in Ukraine.
The 26-year-old is reported to be the daughter of Lavrov’s mistress, with activists saying she has benefited from her stepfather’s influence.
Yesterday a crowd gathered outside her address with signs proclaiming as ‘Polina Kovaleva daughter of Russian war criminal Sergei Lavrov launders his money here’.
Others held signs with a picture of her face and the words ‘war criminal’s daughter’ underneath, a reference to her stepfather’s role in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.
Protesters outside Polina Kovaleva’s flat in Kensington, with signs calling her a ‘war criminal’s daughter’. Her stepfather Sergei Lavrov is one of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s inner circle
Kovaleva (pictured) is the stepdaughter of foreign minister Lavrov, who has reportedly been in a relationship with her mother Svetlana Polyakova, 51, for two decades
In recent weeks Lavrov has made numerous statements shifting the blame onto Ukraine for the Russian invasion, before outrageously claiming last week that Russia had not attacked its neighbour.
Last week MPs called for Kovaleva, who paid for the multi-million pound flat at the age of 21 with no mortgage, to be among hundreds of people sanctioned for having links to the Putin regime.
Polina’s mother is reported to be Svetlana Polyakova, 51, with whom Lavrov has had a relationship since the early 2000s and is said to be his unofficial wife.
Polyakova owns an apartment in Moscow worth £5million. She accompanies Lavrov on every foreign trip and has been on an official aircraft more than 60 times, according to the FBK, the anti-corruption foundation run by the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
She is a powerful member of the Russian foreign ministry described as ‘no ordinary bureaucrat’ in an investigation last year by the respected Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
Polina (pictured) has enjoyed a gilded lifestyle in London, which one observer described as a ‘non-stop holiday’. She went to a private boarding school in Bristol before gaining a first-class degree in economics with politics at Loughborough University
Land Registry documents show Polina purchased an apartment (pictured above) in Kensington, west London, for £4.4million with no mortgage in 2016, when she was aged just 21
Lavrov, one of Putin’s most trusted aides who was appointed in 2004, sparked fury when he refused to sanction a ceasefire in Ukraine and made the extraordinary claim that Russia did not attack Ukraine.
The 71-year-old diplomat – so admired by his boss that Putin refuses to allow him to retire – scorned the ‘pathetic outcry’ over the Mariupol hospital bombing as peace talks collapsed in Turkey yesterday.
He is sanctioned by Britain and the EU and is seen as an apologist for Putin’s bloody invasion.
Polina went to a private boarding school in Bristol before gaining a first-class degree in economics with politics at Loughborough University and later completing a master’s in economics and strategy for business at Imperial College London.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (above) is a trusted aide of Vladimir Putin
She went on to work for Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, where she helped with mergers and acquisitions and later worked at Glencore, the mining company.
Before buying her own home, she lived in Holland Park, west London, in an apartment in a townhouse that is owned by the Russian embassy.
Records show that the nearby Ukrainian embassy alleged Russia had wrongly claimed ownership of the property.
Polina now lives in an apartment, which Land Registry documents state she purchased for £4.4 million with no mortgage in 2016, when she was 21, in a block just off Kensington High Street.
It is still unknown who paid for Polina’s flat and her mother, who is independently rich, has not been sanctioned.
She shares the apartment with a man, believed to be her partner, who also has a 10 per cent stake in the investment company she now runs.
The property is part of an award-winning development offering a swimming pool, gym, spa, cinema, golf simulator, games room and views across Kensington and Holland Park.
Lavrov (centre) is said to have been in a relationship with Svetlana Polyakova (right) for the past two decades. Polyakova is a powerful member of the Russian foreign ministry and is described as Lavrov’s unofficial wife. She accompanies him on foreign trips
Maria Pevchikh, the head of investigations at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said that Lavrov and Polyakova had been together for ‘around two decades’.
Questioning where Polina got the money to buy her apartment, Ms Pevchikh said: ‘Polina’s biological dad isn’t superrich. She doesn’t have an oligarch husband. Yet aged 21, she bought a prestigious apartment on Kensington High Street for £4.4 million, and her lifestyle is like a ‘non-stop holiday’.
Polina’s mother also enjoys ‘substantial assets’ that a Foreign Ministry apparatchik ‘would almost certainly not be able to afford.
Property records show that she and her family own real estate in Russia and Great Britain worth about 1 billion rubles.
At the time this was worth $13.6 million, although the ruble has since collapsed due to the debilitating war in Ukraine.
MPs and campaigners want Polina and her mother put on to the UK’s sanctions list
Lavrov is married to philologist wife Maria, and the couple have a daughter Ekaterina, 40, who was raised mainly in the US where he was posted as a diplomat.
Despite this, Lavrov has been seen on foreign trips accompanied by Polyakova, who sometimes uses the female form of his surname, Lavrova.
Ms Pevchikh said Polyakova and her daughter should have their assets frozen along with oligarchs such as Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska, who were added to the sanctions list on Thursday. Her calls were backed by MP Chris Bryant.
MPs questioned why the government’s list was still dwarfed by the hundreds of individuals and entities sanctioned by the EU and the US.
Layla Moran MP, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for foreign affairs and international development, told the Daily Telegraph: ‘The government is still way behind the EU and the US. The legislation hasn’t passed yet, so if they can act against Abramovich now, why not the others?’
Moran called for action against 35 named ‘key enablers’ of Putin in the House of Commons last month, many of whom have been sanctioned in the EU or US but not in the UK.
Polina went to a private boarding school in Bristol before completing a master’s in economics and strategy for business at Imperial College London (pictured above at her graduation)
This includes Viktor Zolotov, the head of Russia’s national guard whose family is one of the richest in Russia in the real estate sector; Anton Vaino, Putin’s chief of staff; and Mikhail Mishustin, the Russian prime minister.
Moran said that officials should also look at ‘the family and friends’ of Putin’s associates, as ‘one of the ways that they get around sanctions is to transfer funds and assets to family members’.
‘They should be included in the list and ideally it should be automatic,’ she said.
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