Angry protesters gathered outside the London apartment of the stepdaughter of militant Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Polina Kovaleva lives a life of luxury in her £4.4 million home in Kensington, much to the disgust of people protesting her father’s involvement in the war in Ukraine.
The 26-year-old is reportedly the daughter of Lavrov’s mistress, and activists say she has benefited from her stepfather’s influence.
Yesterday, a crowd gathered outside her house with signs saying that “Polina Kovaleva, daughter of Russian war criminal Sergei Lavrov, is laundering her money here.”
Others held posters with a picture of her face and the words “daughter of a war criminal” underneath, alluding to her stepfather’s role in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.
Protesters outside Polina Kovaleva’s apartment in Kensington holding signs calling her “the daughter of a war criminal”. Her stepfather Sergey Lavrov is a member of the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kovaleva (pictured) is the stepdaughter of Foreign Minister Lavrov, who has reportedly been in a relationship with his mother, Svetlana Polyakova, 51, for two decades.
In recent weeks, Lavrov has repeatedly made statements shifting the blame for the Russian invasion to Ukraine, and last week outrageously declared that Russia did not attack its neighbor.
Last week, MPs urged Kovaleva, who paid for a multimillion-dollar apartment at the age of 21 without a mortgage, to be among the hundreds of people sanctioned for ties to the Putin regime.
Polina’s mother is reportedly Svetlana Polyakova, 51, with whom Lavrov has been in a relationship since the early 2000s and is considered his unofficial wife.
Polyakova owns a £5 million apartment in Moscow. She accompanies Lavrov on every foreign trip and has flown on a company jet more than 60 times, according to the FBK, an anti-corruption fund run by imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
She is a powerful member of Russia’s foreign ministry and was called “an unusual bureaucrat” by the respected Organized Crime and Corruption Research Project (OCCRP) last year.
Polina (pictured) lived a lavish lifestyle in London that one reviewer described as a “holiday without a break”. She attended a private boarding school in Bristol before earning a first-class degree in economics and politics from Loughborough University.
Land registry documents show that Polina bought a flat (pictured above) in Kensington, west London for £4.4 million without a mortgage in 2016, when she was just 21 years old.
Lavrov, one of Putin’s most trusted aides, appointed in 2004, stirred fury when he refused to authorize a ceasefire in Ukraine and made the extraordinary claim that Russia had not attacked Ukraine.
The 71-year-old diplomat, so admired by his boss that Putin refuses to let him resign, scorned “pathetic protests” over the Mariupol hospital bombing when peace talks in Turkey collapsed yesterday.
He is under UK and EU sanctions and is seen as an apologist for Putin’s bloody invasion.
Polina attended a private boarding school in Bristol before earning a first-class degree in economics and politics from Loughborough University and then an MA in economics and business strategy from Imperial College London.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (above) is a trusted aide to Vladimir Putin.
She went on to work for Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, where she assisted in mergers and acquisitions, and later worked for mining company Glencore.
Before buying her own house, she lived in Holland Park, west London, in a townhouse apartment owned by the Russian embassy.
Records show that a nearby Ukrainian embassy claimed that Russia erroneously claimed ownership of the property.
Polina now lives in an apartment she bought for £4.4 million without a mortgage in 2016, when she was 21, in a block off Kensington High Street, according to land registry documents.
It is still unknown who paid for Polina’s apartment, and her mother, who is rich in her own right, has not been punished.
She shares an apartment with a man who is believed to be her partner and also owns a 10 percent stake in the investment company she now runs.
The hotel is part of an award-winning complex with a swimming pool, gym, spa, cinema, golf simulator, games room and views of Kensington and Holland Park.
Lavrov (center) is said to have been in a relationship with Svetlana Polyakova (right) for the past two decades. Polyakova is an influential member of the Russian Foreign Ministry and has been described as Lavrov’s unofficial wife. She accompanies him on foreign trips
Maria Pevchikh, head of investigations at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said Lavrov and Polyakova have been together for “about two decades.”
When asked where Polina got the money to buy an apartment, Ms. Pevchikh replied: “Polina’s biological father is not very rich. She does not have an oligarch husband. However, at the age of 21, she bought a prestigious apartment in Kensington High Street for £4.4 million, and her lifestyle is like a ‘holiday without a break’.
Polina’s mother also possesses “substantial assets” that a Foreign Office apparatchik “almost certainly cannot afford”.
Property documents show that she and her family own real estate in Russia and the UK worth about 1 billion rubles.
It cost $13.6 million at the time, although the ruble has since collapsed due to the debilitating war in Ukraine.
Deputies and activists want Polina and her mother to be included in the UK sanctions list
Lavrov is married to Maria, the wife of a philologist, and the couple have a 40-year-old daughter, Ekaterina, who grew up primarily in the US, where he worked as a diplomat.
Despite this, Lavrov has been seen traveling abroad accompanied by Polyakova, who sometimes uses the feminine form of her surname Lavrov.
Ms Pevchikh said Polyakova and her daughter’s assets should be frozen, along with oligarchs like Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska, who were added to the sanctions list on Thursday. Her calls were supported by MP Chris Bryant.
MPs wondered why the government’s list is still overshadowed by hundreds of individuals and entities subject to EU and US sanctions.
Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrats’ spokesperson for foreign affairs and international development, told the Daily Telegraph: “The government is still far behind the EU and the US. The law has not yet been passed, so if they can now act against Abramovich, why not against the rest?
In the House of Commons last month, Moran called for action against 35 named “key aides” to Putin, many of whom were sanctioned by the EU or the US, but not by the UK.
Polina attended a private boarding school in Bristol before completing her Masters in Economics and Business Strategy from Imperial College London (pictured above after graduation).
They include Viktor Zolotov, head of the Russian National Guard, whose family is one of the richest in Russia in real estate; Anton Vaino, Putin’s chief of staff; and Mikhail Mishustin, Prime Minister of Russia.
Moran said officials should also look to the “family and friends” of Putin’s associates, as “one way to circumvent 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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