The US has sanctioned Vladimir Putin’s daughters following claims of war crimes committed by their father’s army in Ukraine.
While Vladimir Putin’s name is on everyone’s lips right now, nothing is known about his two kids with his ex-wife Lyudmila Putina, whom he divorced in 2013, and a probable third, hidden daughter.
Putin is notoriously tight-lipped about his daughters, declaring in 2008 that he “always detested” anyone who “intrude into other people’s private matters.”
Maria Vorontsova, 36, and Katerina Tikhonova, 35, were always going to be in the public eye since they were Putin’s children.
Maria, the oldest, also known as Maria Fassen, is a paediatric endocrinologist and one of Russia’s foremost authorities on dwarfism.
Ms Vorontsova “leads state-funded organisations that have received billions of dollars from the Kremlin for genetics research and are directly controlled by Putin,” the US said on Wednesday.
Her childhood was spent in East Germany, where her father worked as a KGB operative. As a young child, she apparently shown a strong aptitude for the sciences there.
Maria completed her education in Moscow as an adolescent before attending St Petersburg State University to study biology. She is married to Jorrit Faassen, a Russian-born Dutch businessman, and the pair apparently lives in Moscow.
Katerina, a former rock’n’roll dancer, attended the same institution as Maria and earned a degree in Asian studies, specialising in Japanese history, as well as degrees in physics and mathematics.
She is presently the head of Innopraktika, a $1.7 billion project at Moscow State University to build a scientific centre. Katerina is also the deputy director of the same institution’s Institute for Mathematical Research on Complex Systems.
She was married to gas industry CEO Kirill Shamalov, Russia’s youngest billionaire and son of Rossiya Bank co-owner, for five years.
Ms Tikhonova was defined as a “technology executive whose work serves the GoR [Russian government] and defence industries” by the US.
But, even stranger, she enjoys rock ‘n’ roll dancing. Reuters revealed in 2015 that a participant at a World Rock’n’Roll event was Putin’s daughter.
She was also the vice president for expansion and marketing at the World Rock and Roll Confederation (WWRC), the organisation that organises contests all over the world.
Putin has barely mentioned his daughters a few times in public. He startled everyone at a 2015 news conference when he said: “They solely attended Russian institutions. I am quite proud of them. They are still studying and working.”
According to Reuters, Putin stated in 2017 that he wants his grandkids to have a normal childhood.
“Both of my girls are interested in science and schooling.” They do not become involved in anything, especially politics. “They go about their lives regularly,” he explained.
