Putin has 2 daughters he barely ever talks about, and is rumored to have at least 2 more

Sources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, Business Insider

Masha and Katya are common Russian shortenings for Maria and Katerina.

Sources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, Newsweek

Source: Vladimir Putin

“I understood that [Lyudmila] was not a happy woman. She was not,” the biographer Gevorkyan said, speaking of her interviews conducted in 1999.

Gevorkyan said she had the impression Putin did not love her. She recalled Lyudmila as saying: “There are women who are admired by men, I think I am not that kind of woman. He will not hold me in his hands.”

Gevorkyan said Lyudmila’s tone was “more with respect” to her husband.

“I had the feeling that she really loved him,” she added. “And I had a feeling that she was not that much loved back. I didn’t have the feeling that it was a successful marriage for her.”

Source: BBC Sounds

Sources: Reuters, Newsweek

Maria appears to have a lower public profile than Katerina. Here, she is seen presenting at a 2022 pediatrics conference. 

Sources: Reuters, Newsweek, Bloomberg

Sources: Reuters, The Independent, Bloomberg, Daily Mail

She runs Innopraktika, one of the university’s initiatives to foster young scientists, as well as being deputy director of a mathematical institute there.  

Sources: Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN

She took fifth place at that year’s final. 

Source: WRRC

As early as 2016, the couple were hardly corresponding, and Shamalov had seen lucrative shares in energy company Sibur returned to Putin’s friends, a 2023 investigation reported. 

Sources: Reuters, Bloomberg, Proekt

The relationship was revealed by a 2022 investigation that examined Katerina’s flight records, showing that she traveled with members of Putin’s presidential secret service.

Source: Important Stories, Der Spiegel

Nagorny — who formerly showed an interest in opposition politics — has been flying around the world with Vorontsova since at least 2016, according to a joint investigation by Russian outlets Meduza and Current Time.

They had a child together, and Nagorny became the manager of major gas company Novatek, the outlets reported. 

In 2020, per the outlets, Nagorny bought a luxury Moscow apartment in the building pictured above.  

Sources: Meduza, Current Time.

After retiring from gymnastics, Kabaeva became an MP for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party until 2014.

She went on to head up the country’s largest media conglomerate, the National Media Group. 

Source: Business Insider, TASS. 

The Proekt investigation remarked on Elizaveta’s “phenomenal resemblance” to Putin and many connections between the president and her mother, but no relationship has been proven.

In a 2021 magazine interview, Elizaveta’s face was not depicted. When asked whether she looked like Putin, she agreed, but said “there are a lot of people similar to Vladimir Vladimirovich,” using an alternative, respectful name for Putin.

Sources: Proekt, Russian GQ

Her appearance did not include comments on her being related to Putin. The link was briefly made public in the course of a dance competition, but later retracted.

Source: Business Insider, Reuters

Sources: Business Insider, BBC, Politico

A White House statement said: “This action cuts them off from the US financial system and freezes any assets they hold in the United States.”

The UK quickly followed suit, saying it was targeting Maria and Katerina’s “lavish lifestyles.” 

“We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden with family members and that’s why we’re targeting them,” a senior official at the Biden administration said, according to ABC News.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s top spokesperson, said the Kremlin found the decision “difficult to understand” and framed it as part of a “rabid” Western animosity towards Russia.

Sources: ABC News, Reuters

Tikhonova was appointed to a position at the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, known as RSPP.

Putin critics speculated that the shakeup at RSPP, a key Russian business lobby, was done to help bolster the country’s lagging economy, which remains heavily dependent on foreign imports and has suffered from the bevy of international sanctions imposed due to the war in Ukraine. 

State media reporting on Tikhonova’s appointment didn’t mention her relationship to Putin.

Sources: RBC, Fortune

Kabaeva made the speech to the National Media Group.

Her praise of “war correspondents” came just a couple of weeks ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Sources: Insider, Newsweek

At the 2024 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Katerina appeared virtually, commenting on the “technological sovereignty” of the nation’s military, CNN reported. 

The following day, Maria spoke in person on a panel about biotech innovations. Programming listed her as a member of the Russian Association for the Promotion of Science, according to CNN.