LONDON — A former Austrian overseas minister who had invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to her wedding ceremony and danced a waltz with him on the 2018 reception stated she has moved to St. Petersburg to arrange a suppose tank there.

Karin Kneissl, 58, introduced on messaging app Telegram on Wednesday that her ponies, which she has been retaining in Syria, had been taken to Russia on a Russian army airplane.

Kneissl, from the right-wing Freedom Party, served as overseas minister from 2017 to 2019. She was repeatedly criticized in Austrian and German media throughout that point for her pro-Russia views. Her dance with Putin got here simply months after Russia was accused of poisoning former spy Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, with nerve agent Novichok within the United Kingdom.

Kneissl stated in her submit 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 within the far japanese Russian metropolis of Vladivostok earlier this week, Kneissl informed Russian state information company Tass that she had arrange the Gorki middle - a suppose tank related to the state college in St. Petersburg.

Because the suppose tank requires numerous her time, she determined to maneuver to Russia, she stated.

The Gorki middle, Kneissl informed Tass, “deals, among other things, with issues of energy, migration and new alliances - issues in which I am well versed, which also affect the Arab and Islamic world, with which I am familiar.”

Kneissl additionally stated on Telegram that “since apparently nothing is going on in Austria and Germany beyond the economic crisis, my relocation is becoming a political issue.” She added, in a swipe probably at her critics, that “the hatred that seeps out of Austria amazes not only me.”

In an interview on the discussion board with Russian information company RIA Novosti, Kneissl stated, “it’s not easy to move to Russia” due to the quantity of paperwork concerned however that she had already moved into an residence she is renting in St. Petersburg.

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Associated Press author Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, Germany, contributed to this report.

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