Little is known regarding the family of Vladimir Putin.
And it is that during his more than 20 years in power, the Russian president has been the type of leader who has kept his loved ones out of the public eye.
In 2015, during one of his marathon press conferences, he acknowledged that the family issue was too private a matter for him.
“My daughters live in Russia and studied only in Russia, I am proud of them. They speak three foreign languages fluently. I never talk regarding my family with anyone,” he explained.
“Every person has the right to their destiny, lives their own life and does so with dignity,” he added.
But while the Russian leader prefers to keep his family out of politics and headlines, the war in Ukraine has brought their names back to the fore.
And it is that this Wednesday, in a new round of sanctions, the United States targeted the two known descendants of the president: María Vladimirovna Vorontsova, 36, and Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova, 35.
“We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden with family members, and that is why we are targeting them,” a US official said.
The moves follow numerous revelations of atrocities committed by Russian troops in Ukraine, including images of civilian bodies strewn through the streets of Bucha, near the capital kyiv.
Russia has argued, without evidence, that the images are staged of Ukrainian officials.
Although satellite images have shown that civilians were killed when the Russians were in control of Bucha, Putin on Wednesday described the event as a “crude and cynical provocation by the Kyiv regime.”
Putin’s family
Although little official information exists regarding Putin’s family, some documents, media reports and occasional public pronouncements have helped provide a picture of who they are.
Known daughters of Putin they are the result of his marriage to Lyudmila Aleksándrovna Putina (although he stopped using the latter surname following the divorce).
Putin and Lyudmila were married in 1983 when she was a stewardess and he was a KGB officer.
The marriage lasted 30 years, a period that coincided with Putin’s rapid rise to the top of Russia’s political establishment.
In 2013, they broke up.
Putin said that “it was a joint decision: we hardly see each other, everyone has their own life.”
Lyudmila said, for her part, that her partner for so many years was “completely drowned in work.”
the daughter mary
The eldest daughter, Maria Vorontsova, was born in 1985.
He studied biology at Saint Petersburg University and medicine at Moscow State University.
Vorontsova is now an academic, specializing in the endocrine system.
She is the co-author of a book on stunting in children and is listed as a researcher at the Moscow Research Center for Endocrinology.
She is also a business woman.
BBC Russia identified her as the co-owner of a company that plans to build a huge medical center.
Vorontsova is married to Dutch businessman Jorrit Joost Faassen, who worked at Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom, though they have reportedly split.
People who have spoken to her since the Ukraine invasion say she supports her father and has questioned international reporting on the conflict.
Vorontsova, according to the US, “directs state-funded programs that have received billions of dollars from the Kremlin for genetic research and are personally supervised by Putin.”
the dancing daughter
Compared to her sister, Katerina Tikhonova has been much more in the public eye, mostly due to her talent as a rock n’ roll dancer.
In fact, he placed fifth in an international event in 2013.
That same year, she married Kirill Shamalov, the son of an old friend of Putin’s.
Their wedding took place in an exclusive ski resort near St. Petersburg. Party employees said the couple arrived in a sleigh pulled by three white horses.
Shamalov was sanctioned by the United States in 2018 for his role in Russia’s energy sector. The US Treasury said “his fortune improved dramatically following the marriage.”
The couple has since separated.
Following the invasion of Ukraine, two Russian activists were arrested for occupying a luxury villa in Biarritz said to be owned by Shamalov.
The US described her in sanctioning her as “a technology executive whose work supports the Russian government and the defense industry.”
It is said that neither of the two women spends much time with their father.
The president also has grandchildren.
He mentioned them in a phone call in 2017, but did not say how many he had or which of his daughters they were.
«As for my grandchildren, one is already in the nursery. Please understand, I don’t want them to grow up like some kind of royal princes. I want them to grow up like normal people,” he said.
