Supermodel Irina Shayk - and her amazing Siberian spy link

With one of the globe's most recognisable faces, she is famed for her shoots for Sports Illustrated, Intimissimi and most top glamour magazines, plus the eligible man on her arm, footballer Christiano Ronaldo.

But here in Sibay, nudging Siberia - a world away from New York which she now calls home - we find she is not the first in her family to venture victorious onto the international stage.  

In a modest one room flat in an unremarkable block in this copper and zinc quarrying town in the Republic of Bashkortostan, lives a rather distinguished lady who also knows a thing or two about conquering, and has the medals to prove it.

Galina Shaykhislamova (Irina's real surname), is Irina's 88-year-old babushka - or grandmother - but also 'a great role model for Irina, showing that by sheer hard work at a young age you can do whatever you want', explained a family friend.  

While Irina seldom visits due to the pressure of work, she often calls to speak to her grandmother.

Her task was to make maps from pictures taken by reconnaissance aircraft, pin pointing 'the spots with Fascist troops and machines' so they could be destroyed.

'We drove along war devastated roads in a special car equipped as a laboratory, and were under frequent bombardment. There were three girls and a driver, though sometimes I drove the car myself.

'We developed and reconstructed the films, decrypted them, made maps and sent them to headquarters. Some days were so busy we didn't leave our car at all.'

The war took her through Bucharest, Budapest and on to Vienna.

'This is a picture of me when I was 20' - she says, pointing to a portrait on her wall, close to a photograph of Irina.

'I'd already seen the horrors of war by then, travelling through these east European countries.

'Everybody feared they would die in the next minute or the next day. That's how it was.'

She is modest about the bravery she undoubtedly showed, feeling that each generation has its own challenges, and confident that Irina would have managed the stresses of war if she'd lived in an earlier time. 

'You know, I think Irina would cope with such a task if that was what was thrown at her - she's a courageous girl.'

She paused and chuckled. 'I wore a military shirt and a unformed skirt or trousers. She wears other clothes. She has long hair, but I had to have a short cut because of conditions in the war, it was easier to handle, and we were doing everything on the go.

'Putting on make-up? No way! I was ecstatically happy to be able to wash my face in an ice hole, in freezing water.

'But still, the war or no war, we were girls and we tried to be beautiful.'

She was in the Austrian capital when she thought the end had come.

'I remember how I was woken one night by such intense gunfire that I felt the Germans had breached our lines.

But it turned out it was our soldiers firing into the air and shouting ecstatically 'Victory! Victory!' It was 9 May 1945. The war was over.'

Galina remembers the happy faces of those they liberated, though in fact the liberation rapidly turned for many into a new oppression as the Iron Curtain split the continent.

This, though, was not at all how loyal Communists like Galina saw it and until recently, in her old flat in Lenin Street, she had on her wall a signed edict by Stalin praising the forces that defeated the Nazis. 

Galina won the Zhukov medal for service in the Great Patriotic War, and has since collected a number of jubilee medals commemorating the achievements of Russian forces. She still joins the annual parades for veterans.  

After the war, she herself was sent for three years with her new husband to a highly secretive Soviet military base in Communist East Germany, a period she still declines to speak about.

Later she would work in both the petroleum and agricultural industries.

Her own marriage failed soon after the birth of Irina's father Valery - who died eight years ago after an incident in the Urals gold mine where he worked in Yemanzhelinsk, where Irina was born on Orthodox Christmas Eve in 1986.

To Irina, her babushka remains her connection to the Tatar father who did not live to see her remarkable fame and fortune, but from whom she inherited her striking looks. 

'My father was dark skinned, because he was Tatar, sometimes Tatars can look Brazilian,' she once said. 'I get my light eyes from my mother - called Olga, a pianist who was a music teacher at a kindergarten'.

Galina - who often nursed Irina as a child - uses all her old intelligence skills to protect her granddaughter, being extremely reluctant to talk to journalists about her, though fortunately making an exception for us.  

She is especially wary of discussing Ronaldo's role in Irina's life, fearing that too much media scrutiny can strain their intercontinental relationship.

On her last visit to see her granny, Irina brought pictures of the Real Madrid star and talked to her about the man in her life.

Galina confided: 'She told us a lot a lot about him, that he is a dignified person who measures up to Irina. So we have permitted her to marry him when the time is right'.

She insisted that for now Irina 'needs to work' and denied that she is upset that she is so far away from Russia, seldom venturing home. 

Galina insists: 'Let her live the way she wants to. What may I tell her? 'Come and live here in Sibay? She won't come.

'Or should I say: 'Go to Chelyabinsk (the nearest big industrial city)? She has nothing to do there, there's no job for her. No, she's in the right place with her mother in New York'.

Irina offers her babushka expensive presents, but she will not accept money gifts from her wealthy granddaughter, saying her war veteran's pension is plenty to live on.

Galina tells her: 'I don't need it. You do need it, you're young.  You need to enjoy your life'.