Vladimir Putin’s secret children

Vladimir Putin is notoriously guarded when it comes to his personal life but that hasn’t stopped reports of illegitimate children and unconfirmed marriages.

The Russian president’s only public relationship was with his former wife Lyudmila Putina, whom he married in July 1983 when he was still a KGB officer. Lyudmila was often seen at official events but, although she and Putin had two daughters, Maria and Katerina, the Russian president has “never publicly acknowledged them” and has “never been seen in public” with them, said The Telegraph.

Since the couple announced their separation in 2013, Putin is believed to have had two sons with former Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva. Putin’s relationship with Kabaeva, 42, has never been confirmed, although both were “seen wearing wedding rings at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics”. Last year, an investigation by the Dossier Center, which was “founded by former oligarch and opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky”, revealed some details about the two boys, and named them as Ivan and Vladimir Jr.

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‘Very sheltered existences’

Putin’s sons “can’t be found in state databases” because, according to Khodorkovsky, “they have the kind of cover documents typically made for spies”, said Newsweek.

Elder son Ivan was born in 2015 and Vladimir Jr in 2019, the Dossier Center report revealed, though their exact dates of birth “are only known by their immediate family”. They live an “isolated life at a variety of presidential residences”, only travelling in chauffeured cars or on yachts, private helicopters and jets.

Putin has never made any direct reference to either boy, though last month he let his guard slip slightly. When speaking to a group of schoolchildren he said that “members of my family, the little ones, speak Chinese”. They are also believed to be learning English and German, with the Russian “princes” being taught “inside Putin’s hidden palaces by personal tutors on staggering salaries”, said The Sun.

An investigation by Russian anti-corruption campaigner Maria Pevchikh revealed that two German language teachers receive 2.9 million roubles a month (around £25,000) each. That is around £300,000 a year – “seven years’ pay for a German teacher in the Russian provinces”.

As well as having private tutors and personal trainers, Ivan plays ice hockey and has competed in several artistic gymnastics competitions, said The Moscow Times, adding that the Dossier Center report described his results as “not promising”.

Putin is said to be frustrated with his inability to “protect his children from Western influence”, with Ivan enjoying Disney cartoons and “pretending to be their characters” to the “displeasure of his parents”.

‘Lavish lifestyles’

More is known about Putin’s older girls, though their connection to their father remains “shrouded in secrecy”, said The Telegraph.

Maria Vorontsova is 40 and studied biology at university “ under a false identity” before beginning her career as an endocrinology researcher. She is married to a Dutch businessman and, in 2019, became a “shareholder” in Nomeko, a company developing a multimillion-dollar medical centre near St Petersburg, said The Moscow Times. Pevchikh claims Gennady Timchenko, a close friend of the president “who holds Putin’s cashbox” and boasts a £16 billion fortune, gave £4.2 million to a clinic linked to Maria.

She has a child and Putin confirmed to “filmmaker Oliver Stone in 2017 that he was a grandfather”, said Business Insider, with the president adding that he is “very seldom” able to play with his grandchild.

Putin’s younger daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, is in her late thirties and took Asian studies at college, also under a false name. She was “an accomplished rock and roll dancer”, said Business Insider, and is now reported to be working as a “tech executive”. Formerly married, she reportedly split from her Russian billionaire husband.

Affair with a cleaner

Putin is also thought to have another daughter – from an affair he had with a former “cleaner” (and now multi-millionaire) named Svetlana Krivonogikh in the late 1990s, said The Telegraph. Krivonogikh and her daughter Elizaveta regularly “posted images of their glamorous jet-set lives on social media”, and her “uncanny resemblance to Putin” was hard to miss.

But when Elizaveta was tracked down in Paris by Russian news website Proekt in 2020, she “refused to answer when asked if she was Putin’s daughter” and when Proekt published the interview, “Russia’s state media blocked the website”. Elizaveta’s Instagram has since been “deleted or hidden”.