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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Will Stewart & Graeme Murray

Russian defence minister's lover kicked out country over threat to national security

A former lover of Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu has been kicked out of Lithuania as a “threat to national security”.

Yelena Kaminskas has two children with the close Vladimir Putin crony after meeting him while working as a flight attendant on a Russian government aircraft.

A court has now denied her entry to Lithuania for five years and revoked her residence permit.

She is also now banned from the EU’s Schengen area for three years.

“The available data suggests the applicant poses a threat to national security," said Audris Kutrevicius, a spokesman for the court in Vilnius.

Her son with Shoigu, Danila Shebunov, 21, has been criticised in Russia because he has not been conscripted into the army unlike many contemporaries.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (R) and chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov (SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

She also has a daughter, Daria, 14, with the defence minister.

Kaminskas, 49, married Lithuanian businessman Adolfas Kamanskas, 44, after her relationship with Shoigu ended - but she is still seen in the West as a threat due to her perceived links to Russian “structures”.

Her husband also faces having his Lithuanian passport removed - after this year obtaining Russian citizenship.

Shoigu, 67, also has two daughters with his wife Irina, 67.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu's wife Irina Shoigu (social media / East2west News)

Both are active supporters of the Putin regime.

Yulia Shoigu, 45, is in charge of the Kremlin’s effort to minimise psychological trauma from her father’s war in Ukraine.

She has admitted people are suffering "anxiety and fear” and heads a team of 800 psychologists in the Russian emergencies’ ministry.

Ksenia Shoigu is the younger sister of Yulia Shogu (SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Her younger sister Ksenia Shoigu, 31, heads a military museum and park in St Petersburg and was seen hosting Putin and her father.

Ksenia also defended her father who has come under severe criticism from war hardliners, accusing him of tactical failures and defeatism costing thousands of Russian lives.

She said: “My pride, my guiding star, my dad…proud to be your daughter.”

Shoigu has been a regular vacation partner of Putin's.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) speaks with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

But there are reports he has been sidelined during the war in Ukraine, as Putin bypasses him to issue orders direct to senior generals.

There have been rumours that Shoigua has suffered heart problems.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has said that the threat of nuclear war is ‘rising’ as he refused to rule out using his country’s nuclear arsenal to strike first.

He said the nuclear weapons were a deterrent factor in the Kremlin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and against perceived aggression from the west.

Yelena Kaminskas is the former lover of Russian defence minister and Putin crony Sergei Shoigu (social media / East2west News)

And he chillingly he went on to add that the threat of nuclear war was "rising" when speaking during the televised annual session of his human rights council.

When one member asked him to swear off a first strike, he said: "In terms of the threat of nuclear war, you are right, such threat is rising.

“As for the idea that Russia wouldn't use such weapons first under any circumstances, then it means we wouldn't be able to be the second to use them either — because the possibility to do so in case of an attack on our territory would be very limited.”

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