Russian propagandist Solovyov has a second family with US

Exiled comrades-in-arms of the imprisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny have assigned Vladimir Solovyov, one of President Vladimir Putin's most important propagandists, a second wife and twins with American passports. Solovyov works for Putin in many screen formats. Sometimes murmuring, sometimes roaring, he describes the war of aggression against Ukraine as a "holy war" against "Nazis" and "Satan" and regularly calls for nuclear strikes against Ukraine and the West, especially the United States.

Friedrich Schmidt

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS.

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Under the title "The American Secret of Vladimir Solovyov", Navalny's anti-corruption hunter Georgy Alburov has now published an investigation according to which Solovyov has long had a second family with the Russian basketball player Svetlana Abrossimov.

Common driver, common address

Alburov refers, among other things, to the fact that Solovyov and Abrossimova used a common driver, took Covid tests at the same time and provided an address and telephone number. Alburov also found a joint flight between the two to New York at the beginning of 2016 and then the following year a particularly large number of Solovyov's flights to the United States, where Abrossimova gave birth to twin girls in June of that year, whose patronymic was Vladimirovna.

Under American law, children born in the United States receive citizenship of the country, which traditionally attracts rich Russians to American maternity hospitals. Abrossimova also traveled with an American passport. Alburov also assigned her a luxury property in Sochi directly on the Black Sea in the vicinity of other system profiteers. Solovyov often spends time there. Alburov emphasizes that Solovyov's private life and thus also the second family, whose existence had been confirmed by several people close to the propagandist, did not interest him as such, but that hypocrisy must have limits.

Navalny himself had already assigned Solovyov villas on Lake Como in Italy several years ago, from which EU sanctions imposed only in the spring of 2022 cut off the TV man. Solovyov had made good provisions for life after Putin, Alburov said. On the other hand, the Russians would have to cope with the results of the propagandist's many years of work themselves.