Palaces, Business with the Kremlin and Rock and Roll

They are called Maria and Katerina and they are one of the Kremlin’s most well-kept secrets. Two daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin have joined the US sanctions list. But officially, photos of their adults were never published and the Russian government protected their identities. They are a secret to Russian citizens, and Putin has always avoided talking about them in public.

An official biography of the Kremlin about Putin includes a short chapter dedicated to his daughters: it is said that he was pampered by them and their mother, educated. Maria and Katerina are the result of her marriage to Lyudmila Putina, a former Aeroflot administrator, whom she married in 1983 and divorced in 2013.

“In 1985, before leaving for Germany, Vladimir and Ludmila Putin had a daughter, Maria. The youngest, Katerina, was born in 1986 in Dresden. Both girls were named after the grandmothers of Maria Ivanovna Putina and Ekaterina Tikhonovna Shkrebneva. According to his mother, Lyudmila, Putin loves his daughters very much. “Not all men love their children as much as they do. “He always pampered them and I had to teach them,” he says.

Next to this brief reference, a black-and-white photo of their childhood. The Kremlin has since released several images. Putin’s last photo with his daughters dates back to 2002, during a beach vacation, and they both turn their backs on each other. His identity in Russia has since been jealously guarded by the Security Service. They appeared in public but did not say who their father was.

Putin rarely talks to the media about his daughters. In 2015, at an annual press conference, he denied that they had fled the country as it was considered.

“They live in Russia. They have never received an education other than Russia. I’m proud of them; They are still learning and working. My daughters speak three European languages ​​fluently. I never talk to anyone about my family. They were never ‘stellar’ girls, they never liked to be the center of attention. They are neither engaged in business nor in politics. “They just live their own lives,” he said, without shedding light on what they were doing, according to Reuters.

However, both have multimillion-dollar businesses that are closely linked to the Kremlin. The U.S. suspects they may have been helping to hide his father’s property and has therefore become the target of new sanctions.

Katerina Tikhonova (35 years old)

Katerina Tikhonova, 35, is Putin’s youngest daughter. He was born in Dresden, Germany, in 1986, when Putin worked as a spy for the KGB. Tikhonova, who uses her mother’s grandmother’s last name, attended St. Petersburg State University and Moscow State University and holds a master’s degree in physics and mathematics, according to The Guardian. According to the EFE, he was for several years the director of the National Intellectual Reserve Center, known as Innopraktica.

One of her hobbies was to blame Katerina Internationally. His passion for acrobatic dance led him to rock and roll at the 2013 World Championships in Switzerland.

She and her dance partner took fifth place. Pictures of the contest helped identify one of Putin’s daughters.

But Western sanctions target not so much his dance tricks as the pirouettes found in the business world.

Katerina Tikhonova married Kirill Shamalov in 2013, who is considered part of the new Russian oligarchy. He is the youngest son of Nikolai Shamalov, a close ally of Putin and co-owner of Rossiya Bank (a US-designated Kremlin elite bank), and vice president of Silbur, an oil and chemical holding company.

In 2021, an investigation by IStories journalists won the European Press Prize. He shed light on the couple’s business through more than 10,000 emails from Shamalov, leaked by an anonymous source.

The award-winning journalism reveals how, shortly after their marriage, Shamalov took advantage of their relationship and close proximity to Putin to buy a large stake in Sibur, Russia’s largest petrochemical company, for a small investment of $ 100. More than $ 380 million.

A previous Reuters investigation in 2015 found that the couple owned more than $ 2 billion in corporate assets, as well as a luxury villa worth about € 5 million in the French resort of Biarritz, which was recently symbolically occupied by activists in protest. Invasion of Ukraine.

They divorced in 2018, though details of a possible financial deal reached as a result of their separation have not been made public.

According to The Washington Post, Tikhonova spoke at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg in 2021, the Russian version of Davos last year. At the conference, she was not named Putin’s daughter and was only named deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research at Moscow State University.

The new package of sanctions announced by the US on Wednesday describes in detail that its work in technology companies supports the Russian government and its armaments industry.

Maria Vorontsova, 36 years old

Little is known about Putin’s eldest daughter, 36-year-old Maria Vorontsova. He graduated in biology in St. Petersburg and medicine at Moscow University. Like her sister, she is a polyglot and specializes in pediatric endocrinology and the study of hormonal effects.

He gave several interviews on television that talked about the genetic diseases of childhood. In 2019, she gave an interview to Russian state television, so she was Putin’s daughter, talked about childhood diseases and invested 600 million euros in cancer research. Currently, according to EFE, Maria Vorontsova is a shareholder in the company Nomeko (New Medical Company), which is dedicated to the construction of medical facilities, including the Cancer Center in St. Petersburg.

Vorontsova “runs programs funded by the Russian government that have received billions of euros from the Kremlin for genetic research and are personally led by Putin,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement.

In 2013, she married Dutch businessman Iorit Fassen, who settled in Russia in 2006 to work for a gas consortium at Gazprom. According to the BBC, they are currently away.

The couple lived in the Netherlands. He owned the attic of an exclusive residential building in Amsterdam and also lived in the town of Worshoten, in the south of the Netherlands, according to media reports.

In 2014, a Malaysia Airlines plane carrying 298 people, mostly Dutch, crashed in eastern Ukraine. The investigation indicates that he was shot down by pro-Russian forces. The couple then had to leave the Netherlands.

He currently lives in Penthouse, Russia, opposite the US Embassy in Moscow, The Guardian reports.

In 2020, the investigative portal Proekt, which was censored by the Russian authorities the following year, published an extensive report on “Putin’s secret life” and the possible existence of the Russian president’s third daughter. According to an investigation by the EFE, Putin would maintain a sentimental relationship with Svetlana Krivonogu, who would now be one of the shareholders of the Bank of Russia, which is close to the Kremlin leader and would have more property. More than $ 100 million.

As a result of this relationship, the project said, a girl named Elizaveta would be born in 2003, when Putin already headed the Kremlin. The Kremlin has denied that she is the president’s daughter.

Krivonoguia was mentioned in the Pandora Papers, published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, about the suspicious financial activities of officials and oligarchs close to the Kremlin.

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