2014年7月25日 星期五

MH17: 'Maria Putin is welcome in Holland. But not her father'

Anger in the Netherlands at Vladimir Putin's support for separatist rebels who are thought to have shot down MH17, killing 298 people - most of them Dutch - has led to some calls for Putin's daughter to be deported from Holland. 


Maria Putina and her father, Vladimir Putin

Maria Putina and her father, Vladimir Putin  

It is a place about as far removed from the war-torn corner of eastern Ukrainian, where the Malaysia Airlines plane crashed from the skies, as is possible to imagine.

Boats sail serenely past on the canal, as cyclists pedal along the tow path. Children play in the sand pit set in a neatly-kept park, in front of the 10-storey apartment building.

But this building, in the well-heeled Dutch town of Voorschoten, near The Hague, has for some become the focus of anger at the downing of Flight MH17 - because the top two floors are owned by Maria Putina, daughter of the Russian president.

Miss Putina, 29, is said to own the huge penthouse flat with her Dutch boyfriend, Jorrit Faassen, 34, an oil executive. Ironically, the district of Voorschoten is called Krimwijk - which means Crimea.

Pieter Broertjes, mayor of Hilversum - the town near Amsterdam where the bodies of victims will be identified - has called for her to be deported.

But residents of the affluent town of Voorschoten did not appear to bear Miss Putina any ill will. "Why should she leave?" said Arnaud, the local postman. "Her father - he is a strange man. A frightening man, and it is so terrible that his support for the war in Ukraine has led to this.

"But we have nothing against her."

The apartment building which they own was built four or five years ago, locals say, with the majority of inhabitants wealthy Dutch doctors, lawyers and other professionals - most of whom claim never to have seen her.

"She has no life here, because she and her boyfriend mainly live in Moscow," said a woman delivering a community newspaper to each house.

"She's not registered at the municipal office so doesn't officially live here."

An elderly man watering his plants joked: "Yes, they live here, and every day we see them on their bicycles going out to the shops."

In April 2013 Mr Putin was reported by Dutch newspaper AD to have visited his daughter - and gone to the local supermarket in his blacked-out car.

The visit would have coincided with ceremonies to mark the year of Dutch-Russian friendship; something which commentators say now looks distinctly misplaced.

From: the Telegraph
Maria Putin, 29, has become a target of outrage in the Netherlands since 298 people, most of them Dutch, were killed in the July 17 destruction of the Malaysia Airlines jet over Ukraine.
“We have not seen her here since the plane went down,” a neighbor of Maria Putin in Voorschoten told Britain’s Mirror newspaper.
Maria Putin’s apartment, which she shares with her Dutch boyfriend, is just 20 miles from the airport where the doomed flight took off for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
She went underground after Voorschoten Mayor Pieter Broertjes called for her to be deported and Dutch citizens lambasted her and her father on social media.
U.S. officials suspect pro-Russian separatists, aided by the Kremlin, brought down the plane with a surface-to-air missile.



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