Vladimir Putin’s daughters come in from the cold
Vladimir Putin has suddenly thrust his daughters out of hiding and into the public limelight in a bid to soften his war-torn reputation.
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They’re privileged. They’re powerful. But they’ve always been strictly “off limits”.
Now President Vladimir Putin has suddenly thrust his daughters into the public limelight in a bid to soften his war-torn reputation.
Katerina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova have stepped out of hiding in plain sight.
The sisters took centre stage as Putin’s daughters for the first time this week at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) – Moscow’s attempt at creating its own “Davos” circle of financial allies.
Vorontsova, 39, is a geneticist and pediatrist.
Tikhanova, 37, is a tech-industry executive.
Both were presented as influencers and experts in Russia’s biotechnology and defence industries.
“Remember, it’s Putin world, and we just live in it,” US intelligence analyst Ronald Marks told US media.
“That’s an extension of him … his desire to recreate the Russian empire, his desire to show himself as the most powerful guy in Russia. Young daughters represent vitality for him.”
The two are the children of Putin and his ex-wife Lyudmila.
Putin is also believed to have had one or more other children to mistresses.
Both legitimate daughters are certainly “influencers”.
Maria was married to Dutch construction industry businessman Jorrit Joost Faassen. She is now financing a new Moscow medical district and heads up the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP).
Katerina was a successful rock’n’roll dancer. She married the son of one of Putin’s closest friends – energy industry executive Kirill Shamalov – and now leads a military technology firm. She is said to have recently been assigned a Kremlin role finding substitutions for sanctioned imports.
But President Putin’s sudden reversal of his longstanding privacy policy has analysts speculating.
“I never discuss my family with anyone,” he told an interviewer in 2015. “Every person has a right to their own fate. They live their own life and do it with dignity.”
Family ties
“My daughters live in Russia and studied only in Russia, I am proud of them,” Putin said. “They speak three foreign languages fluently.”
While their identity had long been suppressed, United States international sanctions imposed after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 outed both Maria and Katerina as war profiteers.
“We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden with family members, and that’s why we’re targeting them,” US officials said at the time.
But Moscow had continued to shield their identity – until now.
The young KGB agent Vladimir Putin married Lyudmila – then a flight attendant – in 1983. Their marriage lasted three decades, ending only after he secured the Russian presidency.
Maria was born in 1985. She studied at St Petersburg University and Moscow State University. “Vorontsova leads state-funded programs that have received billions of dollars from the Kremlin toward genetics research and are personally overseen by Putin,” the US Treasury Department accuses.
Katerina was born in East Germany in 1986.
She had a less academic upbringing than her older sister. But, after coming fifth in an international rock’n’roll dance competition in 2013, she assumed an executive position in a defence technology business and has been assigned control of a $US1.6 billion government “start-up incubator” at the Moscow State University. Katerina made an appearance at the 2021 St Petersburg forum without being presented as Putin’s daughter.
But Putin remains reticent to share details of his extra-marital relationships.
“I always disliked people who go around with their erotic fantasies, sticking their snot-ridden noses into another person’s life,” Putin snapped at an Italian reporter asking about gymnast Kabayeva.
An editor of a Moscow newspaper was forced to stand down hours after reporting Putin’s relationship with Kabayeva in 2008.
Putin says he has grandchildren, though he has not specified who their mothers are.
“Regarding my grandchildren, one is already in nursery school,” he said in 2017. “Please understand, I don’t want them to grow up like some blue-blood royal princes. I want them to grow up like normal people.
“As soon as I state their ages, names, they would be identified immediately, and any enormous interest would damage the kids’ development. So, everything is fine, and I am asking you to understand me correctly and to respect this position.”
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel
Originally published as Vladimir Putin’s daughters come in from the cold
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