When the family moved to Moscow in 1996, the girls attended a German-language school. The children were reportedly removed from school when Putin became acting president, and teachers educated them at home.
But as Putin gained political power, his children saw him less and less, according to one of his early biographers.
“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.”
There are no official current photos of the women. For Katerina, we found the slightly varying first names of “Katerina”, “Katya”, and “Yekaterina,” and the last names “Putina,” “Tikhonova,” and “Shamalov.”
Maria appears to have a lower public profile than Katerina. Here, she is seen presenting at a 2022 pediatrics conference.
Maria and Faassen reportedly have a child — Putin told filmmaker Oliver Stone in 2017 that he was a grandfather. When Stone asked if he played with his grandchild, Putin replied: “Very seldom, unfortunately.”
Katerina is an accomplished acrobatic dancer, tech executive, and has a post overseeing Russian import substitutions.
She runs Innopraktika, one of the university’s initiatives to foster young scientists, as well as being deputy director of a mathematical institute there.
Katerina married Russian billionaire Kirill Shamalov in 2013, though they are reportedly no longer together. Their wedding was a lavish affair at the Igora resort in St. Petersburg.
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.
Flight records suggest that in 2017, Katerina had begun a clandestine relationship with German ballet star Igor Zelensky and had a daughter with him.
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.
Meanwhile, Maria Vorontsova split with Faassen and had a child with businessman Evgeny Nagorny, independent Russian media reported.
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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.
Reports have also surfaced that a former cleaning lady, Svetlana Krivonogikh, had an affair with Putin and suddenly moved into one of St. Petersburg’s wealthiest neighborhoods.
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.
Putin has tried to shelter his children from the media, attempting to keep them out of politics.
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.
In June 2021, Katerina addressed a conference that’s considered Russia’s equivalent of Davos — but nobody called her Putin’s daughter, apparently out of fear of reprisal from the Kremlin.
In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting condemnation from around the world. No statement came from Katerina or Maria, but scrutiny of their families ramped up.
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.”
The US announcement also contained more details about their work, saying that it has close ties to the Kremlin.
“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.
Since Spring of 2022, the list of countries that have slapped sanctions on Maria and Katerina has only grown.
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.
In March 2023, the Innopraktika Institute, headed up by Katerina, scolded Russian youth for not being patriotic enough online.
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.