The two daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin were sanctioned on Wednesday April 6 by the United States because of “atrocities in Ukraine” after the Russian invasion. They have always remained outside the public sphere, and little is known about them.
The US Treasury identified the two women as Katerina Tikhonova, ” a tech leader who supports (…) the Russian defense industry ”, and Maria Vorontsova, who leads a Russian state-funded genetics research program and “ personally overseen by Putin “.
According to a senior American official, Washington is convinced that ” Putin’s assets are hidden through his family members “. The same treatment will be applied to the wife and daughter of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The Russian president’s official biography on the Kremlin website claims that his daughter Maria was born in 1985 before the family moved to Dresden, East Germany, where Vladimir Putin was sent as a KGB agent. His second daughter, Katerina, was born the following year in this city. The only photo of the two women shows them as little girls with ribbons in their blond braids. Maria Vorontsova and her little sister, Ekaterina Tikhonova were born from the union between Vladimir Putin and Lioudmila Alexandrovna Putina, his ex-wife.
Vladimir Putin, very discreet about his family life, said – in rare confidences – that his daughters received their higher education in Russia, speak several European languages and live in Russia. But the general public knows little about them beyond this brief information, as the Kremlin has kept Vladimir Putin’s family life firmly out of the public sphere.
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Very little information
According to some Russian media, Maria Vorontsova is an endocrinologist working at a large medical research company focused on cancer treatments and with ties to the Russian state. Russian media have also identified Katarina Tikhonova as a mathematician who heads a science and technology foundation affiliated with Russia’s main state university. She is also a professional acrobatic rock and roll dancer, having participated in prestigious international competitions, according to these same media.
At a press conference in 2019, Vladimir Putin refused to directly answer a question about his daughters’ growing influence in business and their ties to the state. The Russian president also did not acknowledge that Maria Vorontsova and Katarina Tikhonova were his daughters, simply referring to them as ” women “. Several years earlier, during another press conference, Vladimir Putin had nevertheless claimed to be ” proud of them “. ” They continue to study and work “, he had said, before adding that they were ” involved in any business activity “nor” in politics “.
In 2020, during an interview, the Russian president said that he did not want to share information about his family, because of ” security issues “, specifying all the same that he had grandchildren, without giving their number.
(With AFP)
