Prosecutors said two men were being held by French police on Monday for breaking into a villa owned by the former son-in-law of Russian President Vladimir Putin in protest of the invasion of Ukraine.

Pierre Haffner, a French activist, was one of the guys that broke into the opulent beachside property in the southwestern resort of Biarritz.

The other identified himself as a critic of Putin’s regime.

They are being investigated for breaking into a private residence, Kirill Shamalov’s Alta Mira mansion, during the ‘past 48 hours,’ according to a person close to the case.

International media have referred to businessman Shamalov as Putin’s former son-in-law. Katerina Tikhonova, the Russian leader’s younger daughter, was his wife.

Haffner shared a video on YouTube of one of the two anti-Putin campaigners going through the sprawling late-nineteenth-century mansion, which is perched on a cliffside with panoramic views of the Atlantic.

‘This house was bought with money stolen by Putin, by his mafia, from the Russian people and the peoples oppressed by Putin’s Russia,’ the man said.

A second man was seen flying a Ukrainian flag from one of the villa’s balconies in another video posted to the streaming platform.

A subtitle read, ‘The house of the people is ready to host refugees from the Putin regime.’

Kirill is said to have entered the overseas property market by purchasing a beautiful 300-square-meter mansion in the seaside town of Biarritz, which is popular among wealthy Russian tourists.

Members of Russia’s imperial aristocracy would go to Biarritz to stay at the Hôtel du Palais, a former palace built for French Empress Eugénie in the 1850s.

Putin was reportedly called by the Kremlin while on holiday with his family in the French town before to taking the presidency. Boris Yeltsin informed the spy chief in Biarritz that he would be his successor.

In the early 2000s, Russia appointed an honorary consul to the small town, despite the fact that the surrounding towns of Bordeaux and Toulouse, which have much larger populations, lack equivalent diplomatic outposts.

When the couple bought the £4 million four-storey seaside property, they reportedly spent nearly £50,000 on a carpet and more than £5,000 on Japanese novels alone, with Putin retaining a special place in his heart for the £4 million four-storey seaside villa.

Unknown individuals vandalised a property in the neighbouring town of Anglet belonging to a company owned by Putin’s ex-wife Lyudmila and her husband, tycoon Artur Ocheretny, in late February, shortly after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

Insults to Putin were regularly splashed in blue paint on the seaside Art Deco-style ‘Villa Suzanna’ walls and gates.

In the weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sanctions were imposed on several of Putin’s friends, including Shamalov.

Shamalov, a business tycoon, lawyer, and petrochemical magnate, had already been sanctioned by the US in 2018 when he was publicly identified as Putin’s youngest daughter’s husband.

The Shamalov brothers are believed to have close ties to other members of Putin’s inner circle who helped transform Russia’s economy in the 2000s and gained personal fortunes in the process.

Kirill was married to Tikhonova for five years, from 2013 until 2018. He is known as Russia’s youngest billionaire.

In 2002, Kirill was hired as Gazprom’s Chief Legal Counsel for Foreign Economic Activity before completing his academic education. He was only 20 years old at the time.

 

Three years later, he became ‘Chief Legal Counsel’ at Gazprombank, which was still a Gazprom subsidiary at the time, before becoming a vice president at Sibur, the country’s largest petrochemical firm, in 2008.

His father Nikolai, a close ally of Putin’s regime, is still a shareholder in Bank Rossiya, which intelligence authorities have previously referred to as the “personal bank” for Russia’s elite and which was also sanctioned.

Kirill’s father co-founded The Ozero Cooperative, a development of dachas near St Petersburg, with Putin while he was growing up in the 1990s. Several Ozero development members rose to prominence in Putin’s Russia.

Soon after his wedding to the president’s daughter, a competitive acrobatic dancer who helped oversee a $1.7 billion expansion of Moscow State University, Kirill’s fortunes began to soar.

After obtaining a 17 percent share in Sibur barely 18 months after their wedding, Shamalov was catapulted into Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people and became one of Russia’s youngest ever billionaires.

Kirill and Katerina were married in February 2013 at the Igora ski resort, which is set in the snow-capped hills just north of St Petersburg.

In 2013, photographs from Shamalov and Katerina’s three-day wedding at Russia’s Igora ski resort broke Putin’s taboo on never sharing details of his personal life.

The celebration was lavish, and the happy couple was chauffeured about in a traditional Russian sleigh carried by three white horses.

The bride was dressed in a long pearl-tinted bridal gown, while the groom was dressed in a dark overcoat. Guests wore white scarves embroidered in crimson thread with the characters ‘K&K.’

However, all 100 attendees were pledged to secrecy and were required to leave their phones at home.

Every corner of the resort was patrolled by guards. No one who has ever spoken out about that day has ever revealed their identity.

The Ozero dacha cooperative is less than 20 miles from the Igora ski resort. Companies with past or present ties to Shamalov and other Putin associates hold the resort and adjoining land tracts.

Putin has been a frequent visitor to the location, though he has always stayed hidden behind a high fence in an adjacent compound.

According to one attendee, the entertainment included an indoor ice-skating display, laser lights, and a mock-up Russian town with performers and cultural exhibits.

The wedding planners didn’t want any photos to end up on social media, so the VIPs were kept away from the resort’s normal workers. Only one black-and-white photograph of their celebration was ever made public.

But, just five years after marrying into Russia’s most prominent family, Shamalov began dating London-based socialite Zhanna Volkova, and the happy pair split up in 2018.

After marrying, Zhanna and Kirill travelled throughout the world as a family, visiting London, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, and France.

But he isn’t the only well-heeled Russian who has risen to power thanks to Putin’s rising tide.

Another is Gennady Timchenko, a Putin loyalist who was recently sanctioned and who, like their father, Nikolai Shamalov, became a stakeholder in Bank Rossiya. Timchenko has known Putin for nearly two decades.

He began oil trading in the 1990s in St. Petersburg, when Putin was a rising politician and went on to co-found Gunvor, a company that grew to be one of Russia’s top oil merchants.

The US administration claimed last year that Putin had a personal stake in Gunvor, but provided no evidence. The accusation was refuted by Gunvor.

Kirill Shamalov, the oil-trading billionaire who eventually became a major stakeholder in Sibur, used Timchenko as a point of contact.

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