A former Austrian foreign minister who had Russian President Vladimir Putin as a guest at her wedding has been named the Kremlin leader’s goodwill ambassador to raise awareness for tiger conservation.
Karin Kneissl, who lives in Russia, will specifically focus on protecting the Amur tiger, a species once common in Siberia that has seen its numbers dwindle, Russian state news agencies reported on Tuesday.
Sergei Aramilev, the general director of the Amur Tiger Center in the Russian Far East city of Vladivostok, said that Kneissl would help the centre in international matters, the Ria Novosti agency reported.
Kneissl was Austria’s foreign minister between 2017 and 2019. She served in the government that included the far-right Freedom Party. Although she was nominated for the post by the party, she was a political independent.
Kneissl danced with Putin at her 2018 wedding in Austria – a move that attracted international criticism.
In June, the 59-year-old said at the international economic forum in St Petersburg that she was happy to have a new opportunity to live and work in Russia.
The Amur tiger, also known as the Siberian tiger, is the largest feline predator in the world. Kneissl said in September 2022 at an economic forum in Vladivostok that she would like to take on a role to protect big cats in Russia.
There are also plans to open a safari park on Russky Island near Vladivostok in 2026, where Amur tigers that cannot be released into the wild will be kept. The tiger is a protected species, but is still frequently the victim of poachers.
The authorities recently reported a growing population thanks to state-funded conservation programmes. Russia has doubled the number of Amur tigers to almost 750 in the last 10 years, it was said.
