Maria Pevchikh Profile picture
Mar 10 15 tweets 8 min read
I would like you to meet Polina Kovaleva. Polina is a 26-year-old glamorous Russian girl from London🇬🇧. She lives in a huge apartment in Kensington and loves to party, her instagram feed looks like a non-stop holiday. That’s not unheard of, but there is one small detail…(THREAD)
Polina is the stepdaughter of Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov. Yes, THAT Lavrov. He is one of Putin's closest allies, his loyal talking head full of hot air and now also a war criminal.
Putin’s cronies often have two families at the same time. Putin himself, while being married to Ludmila Putina, had a second family with former gymnast Alina Kabaeva. Minister of Defence Shoigu had two wives and two sets of children simultaneously. And Lavrov is no different.
Lavrov has had the ‘official’ wife for the past 50 years. No one has heard of her or seen them together in public in ages, though. As opposed to this lady, Svetlana Polyakova. She is the actual wife, they have been together since the early 2000s.
Unlike Lavrov's official wife, that woman is loaded. She bought an apartment in Moscow worth $6-8m. In the picture below you can see Svetlana’s car collection. Not bad for an unemployed lady.
Svetlana also accompanies Lavrov on every official foreign affairs trip. Sometimes she even takes her 78 y.o. mother and her niece. The whole family are listed as members of the diplomatic mission. We found out that Polyakova has used the MFA plane more than 60 times.
Our glamorous Londoner Polina is her daughter from a previous marriage. Here are the pictures that Polina took at her mom’s house in Moscow. There are portraits of Lavrov on the table, very cute. On the third shot you can see Lavrov himself in the flesh.
Polina’s mom and Lavrov have been together for around two decades now. Polina’s biological dad isn’t super rich. She doesn’t have an oligarch husband. But at the age of 21, she bought this apartment in London on Kensington High Street for £4.4m.
She paid cash. No mortgage. £4.4m. Can anyone explain how this is possible? Her only source of money is her unemployed mother who happens to be Lavrov’s informal wife. This is the textbook example of unexplained wealth. The property can be legally seized right now.
Lavrov accused the UK of using chemical weapons TWICE. First time he claimed that the UK staged the Salisbury poisoning. And more recently he publicly accused me of poisoning my boss, @navalny, with Novichok at the request of the UK secret services, which he claims I work for.
Lavrov gave numerous speeches about the evil anglo-saxon world and the awful liberal western countries who want to destroy Russia and Ukraine. So why on Earth does his step-daughter live in the centre of London? Why not in Crimea or Donbass, why doesn’t she move there?
Polina and her mom must get sanctioned. Polina has to pack her Louis Vuitton suitcases, say goodbye to her British life and leave the UK. Should she not be able to explain where she got the £4.4m from, her property must be arrested under the Unexplained Wealth Order procedure.
Here is the list of the Lavrov family members who should never be allowed to set foot on the UK soil ever again:
Polina Kovaleva 04.06.1995
Svetlana Polyakova 28.11.1970
Tamara Polyakova 01.05.1948
Valeria Polyakova 09.08.2003
Sergey Lavrov 21.03.1950
You can find a much more detailed version of this story in our video (English subtitles available). Enjoy!
The above investigation was published by us in September 2021. During the 11 years that I’ve worked for Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, we have published hundreds of stories like this one. You can support our work via donate.fbk.world.

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More from @pevchikh

Mar 7
Sapete che cos’è questa enorme proprietà al mare nella città di Pesaro? È la villa della famiglia Matvienko. Valentina Matvienko, la capa del Consiglio della Federazione Russa (la camera alta del parlamento). Proprio lei ha firmato il decreto che inizia la guerra con l’Ucraina.
È bellissimo qui, vero? 26 ettari di territorio, 650 metri di costa, la casa di 774 mq. Come ha potuto una funzionaria pubblica permettersi una cosa del genere? Così è organizzata la Russia di Putin: se ti piace Putin avrai tutti i soldi che vuoi.
In teoria, Valentina Matvienko è sotto sanzioni. Ma questo non significa che deve smettere di visitare l’amata Italia? In Russia lei vota delle leggi repressive e poi viene a vivere in Italia. Il proprietario formale della villa è una ditta che non si sa a chi appartiene.
Read 9 tweets
Mar 7
This huge seaside property in the city of Pesaro (🇮🇹) is the villa of the Matvienko family. Valentina Matvienko is the head of the Federation Council (upper house of the Russian Parliament). Valentina's signature stands under the decrees to start the war with Ukraine.
What a beauty, right? 26 hectares of land, 650 metres of coastline, a 774m2 house. Where could a Russian official get the money for this? That's the main secret of Putin's Russia: if you love Putin, money will flow on you like water.
Valentina Matvienko was formally sanctioned. But this doesn't mean that she'll have to stop enjoying to her beloved Italy, right? She adopts repressive laws in Russia, but she likes to live in Europe. The villa is registered to an Italian company whose owner is anonymous.
Read 8 tweets
Mar 4
Yesterday was the eighth day of the trial of Alexei Navalny. The defence finally started presenting its position; a total of five witnesses were questioned. Here’s a short summary of what happened.
The first witness was journalist Yevgenia Albats. She said she donated money to Navalny's various projects every month and felt it was the best investment of her life.
The next witness was Sergei Davidis, a representative of the Memorial Human Rights Centre that was recently shut down by the government. He also said that he had been donating money to Navalny’s projects, including his presidential campaign.
Read 17 tweets
Mar 1
Today was the seventh day of the trial of Alexei Navalny. The sound in the journalists’ room was still horrible, and the live feed from the courtroom cut off completely at times, but here is a chronicle of what we've managed to make out. Image
One of today’s witnesses was Vyacheslav Kuzin, who we expected to see yesterday. He also filed a request to classify his questioning, but also withdrew it today. He refused to answer whether he wrote that request himself and how he sent it, claiming that he couldn't remember it.
Another “victim” in this case, Alexander Karnyukhin, was also present in the courtroom. Unlike Kuzin, he stood by his request to classify his questioning. The prosecutor supported him, claiming that this is a “sacred right of a victim”.
Read 16 tweets
Feb 28
The trial of Alexei Navalny continued after a weekend break. Today was the sixth day. Here is how it went, it was quite spectacular. Thread.
At the start of the day, the press secretary of the court warned everyone that the journalists won’t be able to see a certain part of today’s session. Apparently, some unannounced secret witness was going to testify today.
A screen was installed in the improvised courtroom. Many thought that this was done for one of the witnesses in the fraud case, entrepreneur Vyacheslav Kuzin. He is currently under house arrest for his past banking activities and would need to testify via a video call.
Read 23 tweets
Feb 13
Alright, I'm just going to put it out there: quite honestly, the past 48h have shaken even the most solid Russia-Ukraine war skeptics (like myself). So here’s one more very important side to it: any potential military action of any scale puts Navalny’s life at greatest risk yet.
The danger to Navalny’s life, i.e. the probability of him being killed in prison, will increase exponentially depending on what happens in Ukraine. The odds are pretty bad already, but a full-on Russian invasion barely leaves him any chance to survive. Let me elaborate.
What do we know for sure? We know that Putin tried to kill Navalny and still really wants him dead. We also know that for a year already Navalny has literally been in the hands of the very same people who tried to kill him with Novichok in August 2020.
Read 11 tweets

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