The daughter of the Russian defence minister has split up from her ‘anti-war’ husband, fuelling speculation that Vladimir Putin played a part.

Ksenia Shoigu, 32, the daughter of defence minister Sergei Shoigu, has long seemed happy married to fitness guru Alexey Stolyarov, 33.

But the pair left their hundreds of thousands of followers stunned after telling the Russian news channel 360° ​​last Saturday they had called it quits.

‘We haven’t been a couple for quite some time. But at the same time, we are partners and very close friends,’ Shoigu said.

‘We have been friends for a long time,’ Stolyarov added, saying that they split up ‘several months ago’.

He stressed they are going to spend more time with their daughter. ‘We are going to her now! We also plan to develop sports projects, we remain in the same team,’ Stolyarov said.

They were speaking at the Race of Heroes obstacle race in Alabino, in the Moscow region, where they first met in 2019.

Shoigu and Stolyarov spent years keeping their marriage a secret before having their daughter in 2021.

For the couple, clashing and intense work schedules wedged them apart over time, leading to their breaking up, they told 360°.

But Russian social media users were unconvinced, given Stolyarov’s track record for scuffles with Putin’s pro-war officials and supporters.

One Russian social media user said: ‘Everyone around the Kremlin knew that Shoigu’s opponents several times brought examples of Stolyarov’s [online posts] into Putin’s office.’

Telegram channel Narrarivy claimed the Russian president had ‘twice asked’ Shoigu to ‘shut [Stolyarov] up’.

‘The last conversation with Ksenia about a divorce was recently,’ the account alleged, ‘she agreed to publicly disown Stolyarov.’

Stolyarov, formerly the son-in-law of Putin’s loyalist defence minister, refused to be conscripted into Russia’s war against Ukraine.

He faced heat in February when he liked an anti-war Instagram post from Yuri Dud, a Russian journalist designated as a ‘foreign agent’ by the state for his posts critical of Putin’s war machine.

‘It has been precisely a year since Putin and his entourage unleashed bloody and meaningless war,’ the post said, according to Russian news outlet Meduza.

The like quickly vanished while Stolyarov denied ever liking it to begin with.

Though Poligon.media reported that he had like two other poses by Dud, including an interview with the film director Alexander Molochnikov, who fled Russia after denouncing Putin.

Stolyarov did so as he filled his profile on the Russian social media platform VK with photographs of him holidaying in Dubai and behind the wheel of luxury cars while other men his age were being killed or injured in the war.

Followers were not too impressed by this, asking why he was not on the ‘frontlines already’ and accused him of being ‘unpatriotic’.

Head of the briefly mutinous mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, added fuel to the fire as he demanded Stolyarov be conscripted in February.

‘It is necessary to catch Stolyarov and bring him to me,’ said Progozhin on Telegram, even suggesting that Stolyarov be ‘raped’ by Ukrainian forces.

While his views on the war remain murky, Stolyarov has been slightly clearer in his views of Shoigu.

‘He is the most positive, the kindest person. I have never met a person like this,’ he told the online Russian entertainment show Night Contact in 2021.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

For more stories like this, check our news page.

Source: Read Full Article