The Kremlin finds it difficult to understand US sanctions against Putin’s daughters. According to the official Russian response, the move is “difficult to understand and explain.” As part of the fifth round of punishment, the United States has also decided to include sanctions against Russia’s two adult daughters, Maria Vorontsova and Katrina Tikhonova.
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was an “extension of the completely puzzling policy of imposing sanctions” and that the continuing line to harm the families of senior Russian officials “speaks for itself.” “This is something that is difficult to understand and explain. Unfortunately, we have to deal with such rivals,” the spokesman said, promising that Russia would respond to the sanctions.
Who, then, are the girls behind the Kremlin’s big “wonder”?
The U.S. Treasury Department described the 35-year-old Tikhonova as “a director in the technology industry who assists the Russian government and the defense industry in its work.” Her 36-year-old sister Maria heads “state-funded programs the Kremlin has given billions of dollars to for genetic research – programs that Putin personally oversees.”
Explaining the decision, a senior official in the Biden administration said that assets in the U.S. and the rest of the world that belonged to Putin, and other Russian officials, were registered under the names of their relatives. “We have reason to believe that Putin and many others are hiding their capital and assets from their family members.”
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Katrina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova, daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin
( From Twitter)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has always been careful to maintain discretion when it comes to his family. At a press conference in 2015, Putin was asked about his daughters’ identities and contented himself with an answer defined by the BBC as elusive: “My daughters live in Russia, have never been educated anywhere else, and I am proud of them. They speak three foreign languages fluently. But I tend not to talk about my family with anyone. ”
“Every person has the right to determine his own destiny,” he added. “My daughters live their lives and do so in a respectful way.”
There are almost no official details about the Putin family. And yet, according to media reports, the two girls who made headlines over the weekend were born to Putin and his ex-wife Ludmila. The couple married in 1983 when Ludmila was a flight attendant at Aeroflot and Vladimir served as an officer in the KGB.
Their marriage, which lasted 30 years, came to an end in 2013. In doing so, Putin became the first Russian leader since Piotr the Great to divorce his partner. Putin said at the time that “it was a joint decision. We hardly see each other, and each of us lives a separate life.” Ludmila, for her part, said the president was “completely sucked into work.”
Unlike the children of presidents and prime ministers in other countries, Putin claimed that his daughters “never liked the spotlight.” He added that they were “not involved in business or politics”. However, a report published in the Guardian indicates that it is not entirely accurate.
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Putin. Said of his daughters not being involved in business or politics
(Getty)
The eldest daughter, Maria Vorontsova, was born in 1985, studied biology at the University of St. Petersburg and medicine at the University of Moscow. Today she is an academic specializing in the endocrine system (a field in the life sciences that studies the intercellular communication in the body that is done by hormones). She co-authored a book on the phenomenon of growth retardation in children, and is listed as a researcher at the Endocrinology Research Center in Moscow. But, she is also a businesswoman, who has been identified on the BBC-Russia channel as the co-owner of a company that plans to build a large medical center. In 2013, Vorontsova married a Dutch businessman named Jurit Just Passen, who had previously worked for Russian energy giant Gazprom. According to media reports, the couple now live separately.
They used to live in a luxury building in the Dutch village of Worcestershire and in 2014 – after a Malaysian plane was shot down in Ukrainian skies by pro-Russian separatists – some of their neighbors called for the expulsion of Vorontsova from the country. A group of Amsterdam residents recently approached her with a call that would persuade her father to end the fighting in Ukraine. They hung a sign in the area owned by the couple, which read: “Less than 2,000 km from your free and peaceful piece of land, your father is destroying an entire country. It seems difficult to reach him and it is clear that even his executioners will not be able to stop him. But as we all know, fathers and daughters are a different story. “
But people who have spoken to her since the invasion of Ukraine say she supports her father and doubts the credibility of international reports on the war. She currently lives in a penthouse apartment opposite the US Embassy in Moscow.
Her sister, Katrina Tikhonova, took on a public office without being identified as President Putin’s daughter. She was born in 1986 in Dresden, when Putin was on a KGB mission there. Tikhonova uses her grandmother’s last name on her mother’s side.
Compared to Maria, Katrina has appeared much more in public, not least thanks to her skills as an acrobatic rock dancer. She and her partner came in fifth at an international dance competition held in 2013 in Switzerland.
That same year she married Kirill Shmalov, the youngest son of Nikolai Shmalov, Putin’s secret agent and co-owner of the Bank of Russia, which according to the US administration serves as the “private bank” of Kremlin officials. Their wedding took place at the exclusive Igora ski resort, near St. Petersburg, and according to workers there, the couple arrived at the canopy on a sleigh hitched to three white horses.
The U.S. already imposed sanctions on Shmalov in 2018 for his role as legal adviser to Gazprom Corporation – a position he accepted when he was only 20. The U.S. Treasury Department said that “his fortune increased drastically following the marriage.” Less than two years after his marriage, Shmalov was featured in Forbes magazine. Russia’s youngest billionaire after Magnady Tymchenko, another ally of Putin, bought a 17% stake in the chemical company Sibor. Tymchenko later became a target for sanctions. Dollars, as well as a villa on the beach of Biarritz, in France, worth about five million euros.
After the invasion of Ukraine, two Russian activists who had invaded the prestigious villa were arrested and declared: “This house was bought with money stolen by Putin and the Russian mafia.” In 2018, the couple divorced.
Like Vorontsova, Tikhonova was also linked to academia and business. In 2018, she was interviewed by the state media in Russia on issues related to neurotechnology and also appeared in a business forum in 2021. In both cases she was not mentioned as the president’s daughter.
By 2020, Moscow University had employed Tikhonova in a variety of positions and this year was appointed head of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Systems, which was established at a cost of $ 1.7 billion. Putin has previously said of the institute that it is “one of the most essential tools in the national strategy for the development of artificial intelligence technology.” Her university advisers include five members of Putin’s closest circle, including two former KGB agents who lived in the same building where she grew up in Dresden.
According to rumors in Russia, Putin has a third daughter, even more secretive than her half-sisters, from a long-standing affair with Svetlana Krybonogych, who reportedly grew up in a crowded apartment in St. Petersburg, where she worked as a cleaner. Pandora’s documents revealed that Kribonogich, 46, became the owner of a luxury apartment in Monaco through a straw company that was reportedly set up a few weeks after giving birth to a daughter named Louisa. The Kremlin has denied that it is the president’s daughter. Louisa, now 18, has previously said in interviews that she “probably resembles young Putin in appearance.”
Putin’s name is also linked to Alina Kabayeva, an Olympic gymnast, formerly known as “Russia’s most flexible woman.” Kabayeva is one of the most decorated gymnasts, having won many Olympic medals and championships and is considered the one who caused the dissolution of the presidential marriage. Kabayeva has previously been photographed with Putin at various events, and although she did not talk about their relationship she referred to it in a hint when she said she was “very much in love” with a mysterious man.
In 2017, Putin noted that he had grandchildren but never specified how many were involved, and to which of the girls they were born. He contented himself with saying that “one of them is in kindergarten” and that he wants them to grow up as ordinary children and not as princes.