Russia easily finds a place in world news, so this March was no exception. First, tens of thousands of Russians came to say goodbye to Alexei Navalny, who died in a penal colony in February. Then, in a coordinated protest, many Russians lined up to vote against Vladimir Putin in the presidential election, so that no one could mistake the Kremlin's claim that Putin had won his fifth six-year term in a landslide for the truth. Finally, a horrific terrorist attack on a concert hall near Moscow, believed to have been carried out by an ISIS-K affiliate, killed 143 people and injured more than 300.
If it weren't for these tragedies, another Russia-related news story might have gotten a lot more attention. Media magnate Rupert Murdoch (93), owner of the Fox News channel, the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal in the USA and The Times in Great Britain, got engaged to Elena Zhukova, a molecular biologist from the former USSR, who is 25 years younger than him. year.
Murdoch is said to have met his bride-to-be through one of his ex-wives, of whom there are four. It turns out that Murdoch's third wife, Wendy Deng, is a friend of Elena Zhukova's daughter, Dasha. Deng was born in China, and one New York Times reporter joked that "a tycoon simply trades a wife from one authoritarian country for another." In his opinion, Murdoch could be classified as the type of person who "thinks we should all make money (and sleep together) and not let things like democracy and equality stand in our way".
True, not all of Murdoch's wives were born in authoritarian countries. His fourth wife was American model and actress Jerry Hall. In June 2022, Murdoch ended his six-year marriage by sending a letter via email. In March 2023, he proposed to another American, conservative radio host Anne Leslie Smith, promising that she would be his last wife. Not even three weeks had passed, however, and the engagement was broken off because Murdoch seemed unable to accept EL Smith's evangelical views.
Although Murdoch makes big profits from having Fox hosts talk about Christian values, he himself has no religious, or perhaps any, principles. He seems to enjoy being a womanizer: even in his old age he can change women like cars. And maybe his marriage with Zhukov will be different. Either way, it could fuel the public's insatiable hunger for scandalous details from Murdoch's life, which has already inspired "The Heirs," the popular HBO drama about the media mogul and his emotionally stunted, backstabbing offspring.
So who is she, the new Mrs. Murdoch? As part of the Soviet intelligentsia, Zhukova worked at the State Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion, and after the collapse of the USSR, she continued her research in the field of molecular biology in California. Maybe, like many women who moved from the former USSR to the United States in those years, she counted on luck, like in the movie "Pretty Woman": a rich man will appear and offer her a luxurious life, which the residents of the former USSR identify with with the West. Ivana, born in the Czech Republic, and Melania, born in Slovenia, found in Donald Trump.
For Zhukova, however, the lifestyle of a billionaire is nothing new. Her first husband was Russian businessman Alexander Zhukov - one of those talented people of the early 1990s who made money in various ways in the post-Soviet "Wild East". This gave her a certain tone of oligarchic glamour, even when she remarried a fellow biologist who had emigrated.
In addition, Zhukova is the former mother-in-law of another Russian billionaire oligarch, Roman Abramovich. He gained fame in the West because he was the owner of the London football club Chelsea for almost 20 years. As a Kremlin insider, Abramovich often acted as Putin's back-up channel to the West: most famously for his role as an envoy in the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine during the first weeks after the massive invasion in February 2022. That same year, precisely because of his connection with Putin, British government forced to sell Chelsea.
Daughter Dasha, despite her father's wealth, began to attract public attention only during her ten-year marriage with Abramović. Wanting to be seen as something more than a celebrity, Dasha strove to build a reputation as a gallerist and art collector. She became known as a key figure in "Garage", a posh Moscow art project and exhibition space. There they introduced me to her, but when I went to shake her hand, she offered the sleeve of her white silk dress instead of her hand.
Dasha's marriage with Abramovich ended in 2017, but she was not without the oligarch for long. In Switzerland in 2020, at a ceremony attended by many stars, she married Stavros Nijarhos, the grandson of a Greek shipping magnate. With Dasha's mother now preparing for her wedding to Murdoch, it will undoubtedly add a new chapter to the family's story of wealth, power and tabloid glamour.
As for Murdoch, the situation seems more than appropriate: America's leading promoter of conspiracy theories is marrying a former Soviet scientist whose daughter has long been part of Putin's circle. Even the writers of "The Heirs" couldn't come up with a better ending.
The author is a professor of international affairs at the New School of New York University
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024. (translation: NR)
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