The famous gymnast is still fresh and beautiful at 42.
Alina Kabaeva attended a banquet marking the conclusion of the "Heavenly Grace Cup" and Beijing Top Open 2025 in Beijing.
The 42-year-old Olympic champion appeared before the competition participants and guests in a black floor-length dress with transparent sleeves and a bow. Kabaeva posed for photos with champions Yana Batyrshina, Evgenia Kanaeva, Aliya Yusupova, and guests, as well as signing autographs for fans.
Rhythmic gymnastics champion Alina Kabaeva opened the "Heavenly Grace" academy in Sochi at the end of 2022. She often attends the training sessions of the academy's students. The athlete previously stated that rhythmic gymnastics as a sport is "slowly dying."
On April 12, 2008, the publication "Moskovsky Korrespondent" released an article about Kabaeva's upcoming wedding to Vladimir Putin. This news was republished by Der Spiegel, Stern, Die Welt, and Die Presse. Kabaeva's press secretary, E. Ovchinnikova, stated that Kabaeva would not comment on this news and demanded the newspaper print a denial. On April 18, in Sardinia, Putin, at a press conference in response to a question about the publication in "Moskovsky Korrespondent," said that there was "not a word of truth" in this story. Ten days after the article was published, the publication, which had started in September 2007, was closed due to the financial crisis.
In 2013, information about a relationship between Kabaeva and Putin was published in the New York Post and Paris Match. In the French weekly, the article was titled "Alina Kabaeva — the Second Lady of Russia?" As documentary evidence of the fact that Kabaeva and Putin are close friends, Boris Nemtsov presented to the Zamoskvoretsky Court in Moscow on January 31, 2011, during the consideration of a lawsuit by businessman Gennady Timchenko, a flight log of a private jet Dassault Falcon 20, owned by Putin's associate, businessman Gennady Timchenko, which allegedly transported Kabaeva and several of Putin's friends to Sochi (where Putin was) on May 19, 2008. The court refused to admit the log into the case.
Kabaeva herself has not publicly commented on these events; RBC noted that in 2013, in an interview with Alexei Nemov in the publication "Bolshoy Sport," Kabaeva refused to discuss her personal life.
In April 2022, The Wall Street Journal, citing sources among officials, reported that U.S. authorities were not imposing sanctions against Kabaeva in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine due to fears of "further escalation of tensions in relations between Russia and the U.S." U.S. authorities consider Kabaeva to be the mother of at least three of Putin's children (the first was born in Switzerland in 2015, the other two in 2019 in Moscow, with the newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets" deleting the note about the birth of the twins). The former gymnast is "suspected of involvement in concealing Putin's personal wealth abroad and remains a potential target for sanctions."
In August 2022, the U.S. justified sanctions against Kabaeva by stating that she, among other things, "has close ties with Putin." According to an unnamed source from the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, as well as an investigation by the publication "Project," Kabaeva has two sons with Putin. The first was born in 2015 at the Sant'Anna clinic in Switzerland, the second (or twins) in Moscow in 2019.
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