In mid-March, Putin held a high-profile press conference when he spoke of “fifth columnists and traitors” – who should be “spit out like a fly flying into their mouths.”
He focused especially on Russians who have moved to the West and who have switched to a “Western lifestyle”:
– I do not judge people who have a villa in Miami or on the French Riviera, who can not do without goose liver, oysters or so-called gender freedoms, he said with dripping irony.
– The problem is not that, but that many of these people are mentally there and not here, they are not with their people, not with Russia.
Now it turns out that One of the Russians who most appreciates a Western lifestyle is the president’s own daughter, 35-year-old Katerina Tichonova.
A survey made by Russian Istories and German Der Spiegel shows that between 2017 and 2019 she flew more than 50 times from Moscow to Munich on chartered planes with staff from Putin’s own bodyguard.
In practice, according to the investigation, Tichonova appears to have lived in Germany with her partner, the former Russian ballet dancer Igor Zelensky, who was then head of the Bavarian State Ballet.
The couple will also have a hitherto unknown daughter together, born in 2017.
At one point, on December 9, 2019, the following companies left the VIP terminal at Vnukovo airport outside Moscow, according to passenger lists that the journalists have come across:
A piano teacher, three bodyguards from the presidential staff, two nannies, Tichonova, Zelensky and the couple’s daughter, who was then two years old.
That people from the Russian elite spend a lot of time in the West is of course no news. Rich and influential Russians have for many years bought houses and apartments in Switzerland, France and the United States, put their children in prestigious schools in England.
While in private they have shown a preference for “Western lifestyle”, many of them at home have been anxious to prove patriotic and therefore clung to the same countries in which they are so happy to stay – called the West decadent or even fascist.
Still, it’s remarkable that Putin’s own daughter has been allowed to spend so much time in hateful Germany – she even planned a permanent move in October 2019, according to emails from her personal bodyguard that Istories has come across.
Life in Munich was perhaps still quite comfortable. At least if one can believe Tichonova’s partner Igor Zelensky, who last year described “a normal week” for Süddeutsche Zeitung.
He says that he “just like many Munich residents” likes to go for walks in the English Park, about brunches at the trendy Park-Café, about his preference for Italian food and about weekend excursions to Lake Tegernsee.
– The Bavarian Alps are fantastically beautiful, he says.
Where the family is now is unknown. Maybe they’re in Russia. A few weeks ago, Zelensky announced that he was stepping down as head of the Munich State Ballet “for family reasons.”
In fact, he is believed to have been fired for refusing to distance himself from Russia’s war in Ukraine, and his “father-in-law” Putin. When Russian bully comedians Vovan and Lexus called Zelensky’s boss at the Munich Opera – claiming to be Ukraine’s culture minister – he said he had forced him to step down as ballet director.
Facts. Two daughters
Vladimir Putin has two adult daughters from his marriage to Ljudmila Putina, who dissolved in 2014. They are 37-year-old Maria Vorontseva and 35-year-old Katerina Tichonova.
Tichonova has a master’s degree in mathematics and physics. She was previously active in the sport of acrobatic rock’n’roll, where in 2013 she took fifth place in the World Cup.
Already in her youth she changed the surname Putina to a surname based on her grandmother’s father name Tikhonovna. Until 2018, she was married to businessman Kirill Sjamalov.
Since 2017, according to media reports both in Russia and abroad, she has lived in a relationship with the now 52-year-old Igor Zelensky (not related to Ukrainian President Zelensky), a famous ballet dancer and later head of the Bavarian Ballet in Munich.
According to Istories and Der Spiegel, the couple has a daughter born in 2017. They do not reveal the daughter’s first name, but that she has the father’s name Igorjevna after Zelensky.
Vladimir Putin himself has been officially single since the divorce in 2014. However, he is linked by the media to the 30-year-younger former elite gymnast Alina Kabajeva, with whom he is alleged to have several children. In recent years, Kabayeva has mainly lived in Switzerland.
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