Karin Kneissl says she is moving to Russia to lead a thinktank she set up with St Petersburg University

An Austrian former foreign minister, Karin Kneissl, who became infamous in 2018 for dancing with Russian president Vladimir Putin at her wedding, has moved to St Petersburg – along with her ponies, which were flown in on a Russian military plane.

In 2018, Karin Kneissl, then foreign minister of neutral Austria, made headlines when she invited Putin to her wedding. It drew widespread criticism, coming just months after some EU countries – excluding Austria – expelled scores of Russian diplomats in response to the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.