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Russian President Vladimir Putin is famously secretive about his personal life.
Putin has long tried to shield his personal life from the spotlight.
He has rarely publicly acknowledged his children, though media outlets have for years reported that he has two daughters with his ex-wife.
Putin is also rumored to have had extramarital affairs that may have produced other children.
Putin’s family affairs are so secretive that reports of his daughter’s second marriage only emerged eight years after the fact.
But as international pressure mounts on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, sanctions have closed in on his personal networks — and in particular, his children and rumored girlfriends.
One daughter from his first marriage, Katerina Tikhonova, has been entrusted with a key job overseeing import substitutions as Russia reels under sanctions.
Just weeks before the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s rumored then-girlfriend Alina Kabaeva praised the state’s war correspondents, saying their work is as effective as “a Kalashnikov.”
Here is what we know about the lives of Putin’s secret kids and partners.
Their daughters’ names are Maria and Katerina. Maria was born in St. Petersburg in 1985, and Katerina was born in Germany in 1986.
Sources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, Newsweek
Both girls are named after their grandmothers. Maria’s nickname is Masha, and Katerina’s nickname is Katya.
Masha and Katya are common Russian shortenings for Maria and Katerina.
Sources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, Newsweek
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.
Source: Newsweek
“Not all fathers are as loving with their children as he is,” Lyudmila said in an undated quote on Putin’s government website. “And he has always spoiled them, while I was the one who had to discipline them.”
Source: Vladimir Putin
But as Putin gained political power, his children saw him less and less, according to one of his early biographers.
His first official biographer, Natalya Gevorkyan, interviewed him and his family in 1999.
The family was soon isolated and surrounded by security after Putin became prime minister for the first time, she said.
His daughters told her that they admired their father and were proud of him, but it appeared they didn’t get to see him much, she said.
Source: BBC Sounds
Putin’s marriage may also have been loveless. Lyudmila “was not a happy woman” and Putin wouldn’t “hold” her, his biographer said.
“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
Putin and Lyudmila announced their divorce in 2013, although they were likely living separate lives long before that.
Lyudmila had become “almost invisible” in Putin’s public life, according to professor of international affairs at New York’s New School, Nina Khrushcheva.
Putin was rumored to be seeing Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, while Luydmila was believed to have begun dating businessman and triathlete Arthur Ocheretny by around 2010.
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.”
Sources: Reuters, The Independent, Bloomberg, Daily Mail
Meanwhile, Katerina reportedly lives a high-flying life, living in lavish apartments and acquiring a fortune.
Sources: Reuters, The Independent, Bloomberg, Daily Mail
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.
Here she is in her dancing days at the 2013 Rock ‘n’ Roll World Championship in Winterthur, Switzerland, representing Russia.
She took fifth place at that year’s final.
Source: WRRC
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.
The wedding was highly secure and included a laser show, an ice-skating display, and a mock Russian village, according to Reuters.
A 2023 investigation found that the couple, though married by a priest in an elaborate ceremony, never formalized their vows at the registry office, as required by the Russian Orthodox Church. The report suggested this was connected to the structure of the family’s vast and secretive property holdings.
By 2018, the pair had split, according to Bloomberg.
Sources: Reuters, The Guardian, Proekt
Shamalov prospered during the marriage, racking up lucrative business interests. By the time he and Katerina split in 2018, the divorce papers revealed they were worth $2 billion.
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.
Zelensky has served as the director of the Bavarian State Ballet and the Munich State Ballet.
Sources: Important Stories, Der Spiegel
Katerina secretly flew to Munich more than 50 times to see Zelensky between 2017 and 2019, with their daughter in tow.
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
There are rumors that Putin has a third daughter with ex-girlfriend and former Russian rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva.
It’s unclear exactly when Putin began dating the famed gymnast, but rumors were swirling long before he and Lyudmila announced their divorce.
In a 2008 news conference in Italy, a reporter asked him about the chatter, which Putin dismissed, adding: “I always disliked people who go around with their erotic fantasies, sticking their snot-ridden noses into another person’s life.”
Source: New York Post, Proekt, NPR
Neither the child nor the relationship with Kabaeva have been confirmed by Russia.
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.
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.
Independent investigations have reported that the pair had a close friendship between the late 1990s and the end of the 2010s, which resulted in a daughter.
In that time, Krivonogikh went from a former cleaning lady to the billionaire owner of one of Putin’s favorite ski resorts.
Sources: Proekt, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
Krivonogikh’s daughter, who was born in 2003, is named Elizaveta Vladimirovna Rozova and goes by Luisa. Identity papers do not indicate a father, but her middle name means “daughter of Vladimir.” She has not confirmed any relationship.
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
Despite this, Katerina made her debut on Russian state TV as a biotechnology expert in December 2018.
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
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.
Source: Washington Post
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.
In March 2022, an activist broke into a property owned by Katerina’s ex-husband Kirill Shamalov in Biarritz, France, saying he was going to use it to host Ukrainian refugees.
More than a year later, as the war dragged on, Dutch authorities seized land belonging to Maria’s ex-husband Jorrit Faassen, who was under suspicion of evading sanctions.
Sources: Insider, The Insider, The Guardian
In April 2022, the US sanctioned Maria and Katerina, saying that they had “enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people.”
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.
Tikhonova’s work supports Russia’s government and defense industry, while Vorontsova’s genetics research programs are personally overseen by Putin, the White House said.
Source: ABC News
The US said it believed the women were hiding assets for Putin, which was its rationale for sanctioning them. The Kremlin suggested the move was anti-Russian.
“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.
Now, the US, UK, European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan have all imposed sanctions on the women.
Sources: Associated Press, Reuters, Reuters, Japan Times, New Zealand Herald
In July 2022, as sanctions began to bite in Russia, Katerina was given a top post overseeing import substitutions.
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 the summer of 2022, the US added Kabaeva to its sanctions list, citing her “close relationship” with Putin.
The US government had initially held off sanctioning Kabaeva on the basis that it would be too personal a provocation to Putin — a reservation that suggests the White House, at least, is in no doubt about their relationship.
But Kabaeva was finally sanctioned in August over her ties to the Russian government.
Sources: The Wall Street Journal, US Treasury
In March 2023, the Innopraktika Institute, headed up by Katerina, scolded Russian youth for not being patriotic enough online.
The report, which examined young people’s social media activity, likened the drop in patriotism to a hybrid special military operation waged against Russia by foreign countries — using language more associated with how Putin characterizes his own invasion of Ukraine.
Sources: The Moscow Times, Rozkomnadzor
Both daughters appeared at Russia’s economic forum in 2024.
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.
