Wife of Russian defence official «shopped in Paris while bombs fell on Kyiv»

As President Putin’s army killed civilians in Ukraine, the wife of a senior Russian defence official was on a luxury holiday in Europe that included a visit to her son, a student in Oxford.

Svetlana Ivanova, the wife of Timur Ivanov, a deputy defence minister, flew into Paris in March on a £70,000 shopping spree, according to an investigation by allies of Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader. She visited a Prada boutique, as well as an exclusive jewellery shop in one of the French capital’s wealthiest districts. Ivanov has been sanctioned by Britain, the European Union and the United States over his role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On March 23, as Russian bombs were falling on Kyiv, Ivanova, 49, travelled to Britain to see her son, Mikhail, a business student in Oxford, Navalny’s team said. She then returned to Paris to spend time with her daughter, Alexandra, a resident of France who shares her passion for expensive shopping trips.

Ivanov, 47, previously served as deputy head of the Moscow region and has been in his defence ministry post since 2016. He is responsible for Russian defence construction projects, which are notorious for corruption. Navalny’s allies accused him of illegal enrichment, including the use of money that the Kremlin has allocated for the reconstruction of Mariupol, the Ukrainian port city that was almost wiped from the face of the earth by Russian bombs.

The investigation detailed the extravagant lifestyle enjoyed by the Ivanov family, including month-long holidays in villas on the French Riviera that cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, ownership of a mansion near Moscow, as well as a swathe of other elite property in the Russian capital. Their wedding in 2010 was a lavish affair that included a €70,000 appearance fee for a member of Modern Talking, the German pop band popular with the Russian elite, the investigators said.

In the first 24 hours after its release by the Anti-Corruption Foundation on their YouTube channel on Tuesday, the investigation video was viewed 1.4 million times.

The couple divorced in August, records show, but it is thought that the separation was a legal sleight of hand to ensure that Svetlana was not hit by western sanctions. The divorce came shortly after Svetlana had changed her surname to Ivanov.

They have two young children together but Mikhail, 19, and Alexandra, 22, are from Ivanova’s first marriage. However, Mikhail is believed to have lived with the couple since he was six. He studies at Oxford Brookes University, Navalny’s allies said. Annual fees are £14,600.

“Officials in Russia are branding people who leave the country as traitors, yet at the same time the stepson of the deputy defence minister is getting an education in England. This is the height of hypocrisy. Many Russian families don’t earn in a year what they pay for his university fees,” Sergey Yezhov, a member of Navalny’s anti-corruption group, told The Times. Oxford Brookes University declined to comment.

Although many children of the Russian political elite have made their homes in Europe, state propaganda has urged the Kremlin to launch nuclear missiles at western countries, including Britain.

Both Mikhail and Alexandra are keen users of Instagram, which along with Facebook has been banned in Russia since March. Alexandra wrote shortly after the start of the invasion of Ukraine that “there should not be hostilities in any country in the world”, but did not directly criticise the Kremlin. On social media her main interest appears to be designer clothes. In one post, she called London a “shopper’s paradise”, adding: “I don’t understand how to stop buying things.”

Ivanova’s former husband told Russian media in 2009 that she demanded an allowance of at least $50,000 a month to spend on designer brands and other luxuries. She has dabbled in business, including a boutique in Moscow that sold shoes and handbags made from crocodile, lizard, python or ostrich skin. Her income from the businesses was negligible, Navalny’s team said. Neither Ivanova nor her children are included in the sanctions.

The revelations come as millions of people in Ukraine have been plunged into the cold and dark by relentless Russian missile attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure. “There have been no missiles in [Ivanova’s] life. No deaths. But there have been yachts, helicopters, St Tropez, Rolls-Royces, diamonds, parties worth tens of millions of rubles, including in European countries,” Navalny’s supporters wrote.

Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, may have been locked up in a brutal prison camp for almost two years but he is still able to cause problems for President Putin and his inner circle (Marc Bennetts writes).
A new report by Navalny’s investigative team into alleged high-level corruption, this time by a deputy defence minister, could prove embarrassing for Putin at a time when millions of ordinary Russians are being asked to make sacrifices for the sake of the Kremlin’s genocidal war in Ukraine.

Arrested in January 2020 as he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a nerve agent attack, Navalny has managed to pass out anti-Putin statements from prison through his family and lawyers. He has also used his courtroom appearances to urge Russians to protest against the invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin hit back last month, moving him to a cramped solitary cell and banning his wife and children from visiting him.

Although he is unlikely to have had any direct input into this week’s explosive report, Navalny spent years building up his nationwide network of anti-corruption activists, from St Petersburg to deepest Siberia. Many of his allies have fled Russia since the start of the war, but they remain committed to toppling Putin’s regime. They know too well that Navalny, who could face fresh charges of extremism, will remain behind bars as long as Putin is in power. When he does manage to speak out, Navalny’s defiant message to his millions of supporters across Russia is simple, but powerful: “I’m not afraid, and don’t you be afraid, either.”

By Marc Bennetts / The Times