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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
World
Sarah Barrett

Does Russia's Vladimir Putin have a wife and kids? Life of the man who is bringing the war back to Europe

As Russia has wreaked havoc in Ukraine in the past 48 hours, Putin is not quiet about his intentions on the global stage, but one thing he is quiet about is his family life.

Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the current president of Russia.

The 67-year-old head of state - who was born October 7, 1952 - was once a KGB spy.

Putin is now rumoured to be in a relationship with Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic rhythmic gymnast and Russian MP.

Putin married an air hostess named Lyudmila Putina in 1983. ((Image: Getty Images))

Putin’s ex wife

Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Ocheretnaya was married to Putin from 1983 to 2014

In her early adult years, Lyudmila was a flight attendant for the Kaliningrad branch of Aeroflot. She met Vladimir Putin in Leningrad, and they married on 28 July 1983.

The couple, who had been married for 30 years, made their divorce public on Russian state television after attending a ballet performance.

"It was a joint decision: we hardly see each other, each of us has our own life," Mr Putin said.

Lyudmila was the first lady of Russia from 2012 to 2013.

According to reports, Lyudmila married a toyboy, 21 years her junior, she is now the spouse of a known friend, businessman Arthur Ocheretny, 37.

From 1990 to 1994, Lyudmila taught German at the Department of Philology of Leningrad State University.

After Vladimir's rise to political power, Lyudmila maintained a low profile on the Russian political stage, generally avoiding the limelight except as required by the protocol and restricting her public role to supportive statements about her husband.

Putin’s two daughters

Russian President Vladimir Putin has two daughters but is rumoured to have a secret third.

Putin has tried to shelter his children from the media, attempting to keep them out of politics so they can live normal lives.

Both went on to higher education under false identities, with Ms Vorontsova studying Biology and then Medicine in Moscow and Ms Tikhonova studying Asian Studies.

Maria Vorontsova

Maria, 35, was born on April 28, 1985, and is the eldest daughter of Putin and his wife Lyudmila.

Maria was born in Leningrad, (now Saint Petersburg, Russia).

Later, after her family moved to Moscow, she attended the German School Moscow, a school closely associated with the German Embassy in Moscow for children of diplomats which had many students with families from Switzerland, Austria, and Germany.

Vorontsova studied biology at Saint Petersburg State University and is a graduate of medicine at Moscow State University in 2011.

She was a PhD candidate at the Endocrinology Research Centre in Moscow, headed by Dedov and which runs the charity project Alfa-Endo, for children with endocrine diseases.

She is an endocrinologist and has a career in medical research. She is an expert on dwarfism, according to reports.

She is believed to be married to a Dutch businessman, Jorrit Faassen, with whom she has a family, making Putin a grandfather.

Yekaterina Tikhonova

Yekaterina, 33, known by the family name of her maternal grandmother, Tikhonova, has gone from being a career as a "rock’n’roll" dancer to leading a major new Russian artificial intelligence initiative.

Tikhonova was born in Dresden, East Germany.

Yekaterina was formerly married to Russia’s youngest billionaire, Kirill Shamalov, 38, though the pair have now divorced.

Tikhonova is the director of Innopraktika, a $1.7 billion development project to create a science centre at Moscow State University.

She is also Deputy Director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems at Moscow State University.

Katerina gained a PhD from University after completing a study on helping cosmonauts and pilots to orientate themselves in difficult conditions.

Vorontsova is credited to be Putin's advisor in genetic engineering, especially in the usage of CRISPR to create genetically-engineered babies.

In 2013, Tikhonova married Kirill Shamalov, the son of Nikolay Shamalov, a co-owner of Rossiya Bank.

In 2013, they were living in a penthouse atop the highest residential building in Voorschoten in the Netherlands, but in 2014 Dutch residents called for Vorontsova to be expelled from the country after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine.

He is also vice-president of Sibur Holding, which is a Russian gas processing and petrochemicals company headquartered in Moscow.

The Russian government holds 38% of the shares of the gas company.

At the time, the couple was estimated to hold assets worth around $2 billion.

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