Countess says she is happier not living the lifestyle of a billionaire
THE estranged British partner of a Russian oligarch has told of her relief at leaving behind her billionaire lifestyle of private jets and designer shopping trips.
Countess Alexandra Tolstoy began a relationship with Sergei Pugachev, once known as Vladimir Putin’s banker, after being hired to teach him English.
They went on to have three children and divided their time between a Chelsea townhouse, a French chateau, a 200-acre estate in Herefordshire and a $40million (£32million) villa in St Barts.
But their relationship broke down as the Russian government turned on Mr Pugachev and he was forced into exile on the Cote d’azur amid fears for his life.
The Countess, 49, daughter of Count Nikolai Tolstoy and a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy, no longer has access to Pugachev’s billions and must fend for herself, making a living as a writer and running a travel business.
The disintegration of her relationship is chronicled in a BBC Two documentary, The Countess and the Russian Billionaire, to be shown on April 8.
When the film begins in 2015, she is shown boasting of her weakness for Chanel, explaining that her partner bought the Chelsea house next door for their children to play in and describing how she sent a private jet to collect some new radiators.
But speaking to this week’s edition of Radio Times, the Countess said of her old life: “The clothes were a superficial symbol of how much I’d lost myself.
“Hand on heart, I do not miss one, single element of that life.
“I spent months in these wonderful places, but I was so unhappy and frightened all the time and it was exhausting.”
She first hit the headlines in 2003 when she married Shamil Galimzyanov, an Uzbek horse guide. She left him for Mr Pugachev and gave several interviews about their romance.
However, she has said their relationship was a miserable one. “From early on Sergei was one minute domineering, the next minute charming. Nobody around me could see it – it wasn’t like I was covered in bruises. I remember looking around at women on the school run, thinking they were just living these normal lives and they had no idea how isolated I felt.”