Here is more from Associated Press:
A former Austrian foreign minister who had invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to her wedding and danced a waltz with him at the 2018 reception said she has moved to St. Petersburg to set up a think tank there.
Karin Kneissl, 58, announced on messaging app Telegram on Wednesday that her ponies, which she has been keeping in Syria, were taken to Russia on a Russian military plane.
Kneissl was nominated as a non-party member by the right-wing Freedom Party to serve as foreign minister, a position which she held from 2017 to 2019.
At the Eastern Economic Forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok earlier this week, Kneissl told Russian state news agency Tass that she had set up the Gorki center — a think tank associated with the state university in St. Petersburg.
Because the think tank requires a lot of her time, she decided to move to Russia, she said.
The "Gorki" in Gorki Centre is reportedly short for "Geopolitical Observatory for Russia's Key Issues."
