Who are Vladimir Putin’s children?

A group of pro-Ukrainian protesters were detained by French police yesterday after breaking into a villa in Biarritz belonging to Vladimir Putin’s younger daughter.

The group, led by Frenchman and former businessman Pierre Haffner, who lived in Russia for over two decades, declared the multimillion-pound beach-front property to be “a shelter for Ukrainian refugees”, reported The Times.

The home is used by Katerina Tikhonova, the 35-year-old younger daughter of the Russian president, and was bought by her former husband, Kirill Shamalov, in 2012 for €4.5m.

The protesters posted a video on social media of the inside of the home, which featured “marble-clad bathrooms, eight bedrooms, a music room with a piano and guitars, a gaudy bar, a library, a large living room and a terrace overlooking the sea”, said the paper. 

While the world’s eyes are on Putin and the war he is waging against Ukraine, he has always been notoriously secretive about his private life, making a “concerted effort to shield his children from the spotlight, prompting many to question whether he even has children at all”, said Business Insider. 

Putin has never “publicly acknowledged” his children, but it is thought he has at least two daughters with his ex-wife, Lyudmila Ocheretny, a former Aeroflot cabin attendant. 

The pair were married for almost 30 years during which time Putin moved up the ranks of the KGB and its successor, the FSB, before he succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president in 1999. But the pair split “just weeks” before their 30th wedding anniversary, in June 2013, after Putin’s “16 and 17-hour days” took its toll on their family life, said The Mirror. 

Who are Putin’s children?

Maria Faassen

Putin’s elder child Maria was born on 28 April 1985. Now 36, she is reportedly an endocrinologist and one of Russia’s foremost experts on dwarfism, according to The Sun. 

She studied biology at St Petersburg University before going on to study medicine at Moscow State University, reported Reuters in 2015. She then went on to be a PhD candidate at the Endocrinology Research Centre in Moscow, which runs a charity project, Alfa-Endo, that helps children affected by endocrine ailments, said the news agency.

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/956090/who-are-vladimir-putins-children