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It was 2008, and the Russian president, then 56 and eight years into his tightening grip on energy, stood for a information convention in Sardinia’s lavish Villa Certosa. At his facet was his closest ally in Western Europe, Silvio Berlusconi, the media mogul and Italian prime minister of legendarily hedonist appetites with whom he shared a style for raunchy jokes, over-the-top furnishings and huge wealth.
Throughout the summers, Putin’s two teenage daughters had the run of the sprawling villa, occurring secret luxurious buying and boating excursions below strict orders that their identities stay hid and their faces hidden from cameras, in response to an individual with information of the association.
That technique of strictly shielding his household labored effectively for Putin over time, till Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Now, as nations impose sanctions on these closest to him — together with these accredited Friday by Britain on the lady lengthy thought-about to be his mistress, Alina Kabaeva, and his former spouse, Lyudmila Ocheretnaya — the facade is starting to crumble, shedding new mild on the Russian chief’s personal life.
A few of the first glimmers of his sophisticated household affairs unfolded in that scene on the villa, as a Russian reporter, Nataliya Melikova of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, gingerly broached the forbidden zone. Days earlier than, a report in Moskovsky Korrespondent claimed that Putin and his spouse of 25 years had secretly cut up. Enticingly, the newspaper additional reported that he had fallen for Kabaeva, an Olympic gold medalist in rhythmic gymnastics, who, at 24, was concerning the age of his daughters and had develop into a public face of his political social gathering.
“I’ve at all times reacted negatively to those that, with their snotty noses and erotic fantasies, meddle in different individuals’s lives,” Putin stated, denying the report. Berlusconi mimed taking pictures Melikova with an imaginary machine gun as Putin, who by then had been accused of murdering a number of journalists, nodded and smiled. Days later, Moskovsky Korrespondent halted operations for “monetary causes.”
Putin is greater than only a protecting father who, as he has stated, wished to present his daughters a standard life and thought of their security a matter of nationwide safety. A former KGB operative steeped within the company’s methods of subterfuge, disinformation and the Janus-like potential to current completely different selves relying on the state of affairs, he has shrouded his private life in secrecy and wrapped it in rumor.
He has two formally acknowledged daughters from his first marriage, however in response to unbiased Russian information retailers and unverified worldwide information reviews, he might have 4 extra kids with two different ladies. But even his acknowledged daughters, now approaching center age, are so hidden as to be unrecognizable on a Moscow road.
Within the villa-dotted Russian enclaves of Switzerland, a petition started circulating in March demanding the repatriation of his supposed paramour, Kabaeva, angrily evaluating her with Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun. In Lugano, locals whisper concerning the inexperienced glass constructing that Kabaeva lived in overlooking the lake and communicate with confidence concerning the hospital the place her rumored kids have been born. However they haven’t seen her.
The supposed kids are unverified and invisible. In lots of circumstances, they’re apparitions, and as in lots of ghost tales, the phantoms can appear conjured for a desired impact, both by critics to undercut Putin’s self-made picture as a protector of household values or by supporters to compound the picture of Putin’s wealth, virility and mysteriousness. Or possibly they’re merely actual.
“There’s so many tales. All of them will be true or none of them will be true. And that’s kind of the fog of Putin,” stated Nina Khrushcheva, a Moscow-born professor of worldwide affairs on the New Faculty in New York.
Some issues do appear clear sufficient, although. Members of Putin’s household circle are beneficiaries of a kleptocratic system that Putin guidelines over like a mafia don. For many years, few succeeded in penetrating the opaque protecting bubble constructed round them and their sources, however Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has modified that.
In April, the USA aimed into the fog and imposed sanctions on his two daughters, citing them as relations of a penalized particular person — Putin — and asserting their assist for the Russian protection business and reception of billions of {dollars} of funds immediately overseen by Putin. The U.S. authorities additionally almost positioned sanctions on Kabaeva, however pulled again on the final second to keep away from, for now, an escalation, officers stated.
Sanctions specialists say these measures have been much less meant to do Putin concrete monetary hurt than to ship him a message that his aggression had crossed a line, and that his invisible and untouchable personal world may very well be seen and reached by the West.
The Dutch Department
On a grassy plot of land on the outskirts of Amsterdam, protesters just lately despatched a message to Putin by way of his daughter Maria. Close to Ukrainian flags planted in the midst of a coronary heart product of candles, an indication addressed to “Ave Maria Putin” learn: “It appears your previous man is tough to succeed in and clearly unattainable to cease even by his hangmen. However as everyone knows, fathers and daughters are a unique story,” and, “We beg you, Maria.”
What at first appeared an unlikely place for an attraction — and an unlikely particular person to attraction to — made extra sense when one understood that the land had just lately been purchased by Jorrit Faassen, a Dutch man who was as soon as married to and has at the least one little one with Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova, as Putin’s eldest daughter is understood. Within the 15 years since Vorontsova secretly started residing with Faassen within the Netherlands, she had at instances develop into the main target of native ire towards her authoritarian father.
All of that anger and nervousness was far faraway from the revelry at a celebration celebrating the couple in 2008 in Wassenaar, maybe essentially the most unique and rich space in all of the Netherlands. “It was a marriage social gathering,” recalled Danny Plezier, an area singer of Dutch folks songs who carried out on the affair.
He stated the friends sang alongside together with his hits, and he shook fingers with the groom, whom he had recognized for years, and his new bride. Plezier stated he had no concept she was Putin’s daughter and left after his set.
The groom’s cousin CAIsper Faassen, now a distinguished Dutch artist, stated that the subsequent time he noticed his cousin’s spouse, Maria, was at his aunt’s party within the close by city of Merenwijk. He stated Maria appeared composed however aside. She communicated with everybody, together with her husband, in good English and spoke little Dutch.
Neither Casper Faassen nor many others within the household knew the true identification of the lady who went as Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova, and now Maria Faassen, however Masha to her father. However in 2010, a Russian information outlet, New Instances, reported that Jorrit Faassen, then an official at a Russian consultancy agency, obtained a beating from the bodyguards of Matvey Urin, a prime Russian banker who didn’t know who he was coping with, after a highway rage episode in Moscow.
Urin promptly misplaced licenses to function banks and the bodyguards ended up in jail. Russian gossip reporters speculated that the Dutchman was Putin’s son-in-law, though Jorrit Faassen at all times denied it.
The couple spent a lot of their time in Moscow, the place paperwork listed him as an official at Gazprombank. Casper Faassen stated his cousin as soon as supplied him the potential of profitable connections and gross sales in Russia. However by then, the rumors of Maria’s parentage had begun to flow into and the artist, who reviled Putin for his undercutting of democracy and violent crackdowns, demurred.
However native residents paid extra consideration to them. On a current afternoon across the luxurious high-rise the place Jorrit Faassen purchased the highest two flooring, one Ukrainian neighbor expressed disgust on the former inhabitants whereas Corien Zoetemelk, 57, who lives throughout the road from the penthouse condominium, recalled seeing the couple at varied instances, together with gliding alongside the canal beneath their condominium constructing.
“I noticed them on their sloop,” she stated. “She was pregnant.”
Sergei Roldugin, a cellist and an in depth — and fabulously enriched — pal of Putin, now on the USA’ and European Union’s sanctions lists, and Vorontsov’s godfather, as soon as informed an interviewer that she had a son in 2012. In a 2017 interview with Oliver Stone, Putin acknowledged that he had develop into a grandfather.
By 2014, Vorontsov had develop into a specialist in pediatric dwarfism. Her charity challenge, Elfa-Endo, which helps kids with endocrine issues, additionally obtained funding from the highly effective — and now below sanction — Alfa Financial institution. That may very well be the explanation the U.S. Treasury determined to punish her for main “state-funded applications which have obtained billions of {dollars} from the Kremlin towards genetics analysis and are personally overseen by Mr. Putin.”
These sanctions might damage her new household. In response to a report printed in April by the unbiased Russian information outlet Meduza and the Russian-language web site Present Time TV, she had by then divorced Jorrit Faassen and remarried a Russian man who bought a job on the gasoline firm Novatek. A robust oligarch, Gennady Timchenko, who typically pops up as Putin’s household fixer, and who can be on sanctions lists, just lately sat on Novatek’s board.
The ‘Disciplined’ Daughter
From the start, Putin’s private story appeared crammed with the stuff of delusion making. He used an official biography — printed in 2001 — to burnish his picture as a tricky however heroic household man. In it, he tells the story of personally saving the household, whereas bare, when a defective sauna burned down the household dacha.
“The women suffered essentially the most from the incident,” Putin stated of his two daughters.
Now, the conflagration of Putin’s battle in Ukraine has threatened to strip them of all the things once more.
That goes, too, for his second daughter, Katya, who, as Putin tells it, “turned out to be essentially the most disciplined.”
Certainly, Katya, who lived below the alias Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova, appears to be the one who has adhered extra to Putin’s circle of affect. In February 2013, she reportedly married Kirill Shamalov, the son of Nikolai Shamalov, an in depth affiliate of Putin’s and main shareholder of the Financial institution Rossiya. One among Putin’s most well-liked ski resorts, Igora, offered an idyllic winter setting.
Tikhonova was herself a seasoned performer who had develop into captivated with acrobatic rock ’n’ roll dancing. In 2013, she and her dance companion, Ivan Klimov, carried out on the Boogie-Woogie World Masters of acrobatic rock.
“Everybody knew she was Putin’s daughter,” stated Edilio Pagano, who typically judged the occasions that Tikhonova competed in however stated he by no means felt stress to present her larger scores.
Round 2014, Pagano labored along with her on the manager committee of the World Rock ’n’ Roll Confederation, primarily based in Switzerland, the place she was the vp for enlargement and advertising and marketing. She hardly ever attended conferences, he stated, however when she did, she was at all times accompanied by two bodyguards.
By then, she was busy with larger enterprise. In 2015, the Russian information company RBC reported that she had gone to Switzerland not for a dance competitors, however to attend the “Russian session” of the Davos Discussion board with Shamalov.
Putin let slip in a 2011 Russian tv interview that Tikhonova majored in Oriental research at St. Petersburg College. However as she stepped gingerly into view in 2015, it was because the creator of a math textbook and a half-dozen scientific papers.
But she was greater than a tutorial. Tikhonova headed a analysis institute, Innopraktika, to sponsor and assist younger scientists, that was partly financed by the state oil firm Rosneft. The board of Innopraktika, Reuters discovered, had a number of Putin confidants and former KGB officers. By 2014, she helped oversee the $1.7 billion enlargement of Moscow State College.
As she grew professionally, so did her husband’s wealth. Kirill Shamalov acquired from Timchenko a roughly $3 billion stake in Russia’s main oil and petrochemical firm and have become one in every of its prime shareholders. The couple additionally acquired from Timchenko a seaside villa in Biarritz, France.
In 2018, Tikhonova appeared on a Russian tv present, which recognized her because the “director of Innopraktika and deputy director of the Institute of Mathematical Examine of Advanced Programs at Moscow State College.” (The U.S. Treasury Division positioned sanctions on her for being “a tech govt whose work” helps the Russian authorities “and protection business.”)
That 12 months, Bloomberg reported that the couple divorced and shared almost $2 billion in belongings. The U.S. positioned sanctions on Shamalov, figuring out him because the “former husband” of Tikhonova.
The Different Ladies in Putin’s Life
Putin’s battle has additionally pressured different kids linked to him to drag again from their most well-liked public actions.
Elizaveta Vladimirovna Krivonogikh, whose patronymic means she is the daughter of a Vladimir, is a 19-year-old often known as Luiza who performed up her potential connection to Putin to realize tens of hundreds of followers on her Instagram account. However the battle introduced offended consideration and her account out of the blue disappeared.
Luiza Krivonogikh is the daughter of Svetlana Krivonogikh, 47, a former cleansing lady in St. Petersburg, who, by way of an alleged relationship with Putin, became an actual property baroness, a board member of Putin’s private Financial institution Rossiya and a significant stakeholder within the Igora ski resort the place Putin’s second daughter was married.
In 2021, the discharge of the Pandora Papers — thousands and thousands of leaked paperwork from offshore monetary corporations — and an earlier investigation by Proekt, which was subsequently banned in Russia, confirmed that Svetlana Krivonogikh’s price was estimated to be round 100 million euros, or about $105 million.
Maria Pevchikh, the top of investigations on the Anti-Corruption Basis, a Russian nonprofit group based by Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, was sure that Putin had fathered kids together with his mistresses and that that they had lived in luxurious overseas.
She pointed to paper trails that indicated extravagant wealth for the ladies and their households and to property information exhibiting {that a} Gazprom subsidiary gave luxurious residences in the identical Moscow constructing to the moms of Kabaeva and Luiza Krivonogikh.
On a current afternoon, as Russians climbed into unique sports activities vehicles in entrance of Monte Carlo’s landmark on line casino, residents of the condominium constructing there stated that they had by no means seen both Svetlana Krivonogikh or her daughter. The doorman stated she didn’t reside there.
On April 22, Putin’s supposedly present mistress — and by some accounts, his new spouse, Kabaeva — appeared in Moscow at her annual Alina Pageant, a patriotic gymnastics occasion. An advisory member of the Nationwide Media Group, managed by the highly effective oligarch Yuri Kovalchuk, she rallied assist for the invasion of Ukraine in entrance of the “Z” indicators which can be symbols of Putin’s battle.
The Swiss and worldwide information media have typically reported as a on condition that Kabaeva, who was residing in Switzerland, had Putin’s little one on the Sant’Anna clinic close to Lugano in 2015, when he disappeared for eight days.
The Lugano clinic declined to remark. A 2019 report in a Russian newspaper saying that Kabaeva had given start to twins vanished from the net.
Round Lugano, residents are sure that she had as soon as lived below heavy guard within the glass luxurious constructing overlooking the lake in Lugano’s Paradiso neighborhood.
However the doorman on the constructing stated he had labored there for 10 years and had by no means seen anybody by that identify. And the couple’s reported kids have by no means publicly materialized.
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