Vladimir Putin and his mysterious love life

Over the years, the

Over the years, the revealing nature of Vladimir Putin’s
publicity shoots – which have featured him wandering half-naked
around the Siberian wilderness, enjoying a shirtless fishing trip
and taking a dip in an icy lake – have repeatedly broken the
internet. 

But while the Russian president clearly has no issue with seeing
his practically naked body splashed across the world’s media, he
has consistently kept one key aspect of his life under wraps: his
romantic interests. 

Over the years, Russian journalists have seen their careers
threatened and in some cases destroyed when attempting to report on
Putin’s love life.

“Even the opposition press – which regularly writes about
corruption in Putin’s inner circle – has been wary of writing about
Putin’s women,” said The Spectator^[1]. To this day, Putin’s
number of children and relationship status remain taboo subjects
for Russia’s media.

By contrast, Putin has no qualms about mounting personal
attacks on political
opponents^[2] in what The Economist^[3] has described as
Russia’s “new era of repression”. So what do we actually know
about the private life of the man who’s been steering the
superpower pretty much continuously since the turn of the
millennium? 

Marriage to an air stewardess

Putin’s ex-wife, Lyudmila Putina, once worked as a flight
attendant, a highly coveted job in the Soviet era. They met in
the early 1980s when a mutual friend invited them both to the
theatre

“I became friends with Lyuda, my future wife,” Putin recalled in
what The Washington
Post^[4] described as a
“passionless account” on his former presidential website.

“I understood that if I didn’t marry for another two or three
years, I would never marry. Though, of course, I had made a habit
of leading a bachelor’s life. Lyudmila uprooted it.”

Pictures of their wedding day on 28 July 1983, “show Putina
draped in a long white shawl and Putin squeezed inside a black
suit”, said the newspaper. 

The pair went on to have two daughters in the
mid-1980s; one is now a 36-year-old geneticist and the other a
34-year-old mathematician. Putin has never “publicly identified his
children other than to say he has two daughters”, reported The Post
in a separate
article^[5]. 

In 2019, BBC Russia reporter Farida Rustamova asked the Russian
leader to admit that the two women were his daughters. “Your old
friends, managers of state companies, are helping these two women
with their business operations,” she explained. Putin
refused. 

Putins separated after 30 years

The Putins announced their separation in 2013, three decades
after their marriage. “It is unclear when, precisely, their
marriage began to fray, but every account suggests it emerged from
their diverging personalities,” said The Post.

The growing attention on Putin discomfited Putina and she was
rarely seen in public towards the end of the marriage, even on her
own, sparking speculation that she was in a convent. 

In 2013, The Moscow
Times^[6] reported she once told a
friend that Putin was “a vampire”, to which Putin retorted that
anyone who could put up with his wife for three weeks “deserved a
monument”.

Alleged affair with ‘cleaner-turned
multimillionaire’

In 2020, the independent investigative Russian media platform
Proekt published a series of exposes which included the claim that
Putin had conducted an affair with a woman called Svetlana
Krivonogikh during his marriage to Putina after he first became
president in 1999.

The site also claimed that Putin had fathered Luiza Rozova, the
daughter of Krivonogikh, whom the Daily Mail^[7] described as a
“cleaner-turned-millionaire ‘mistress’”. 

Analysing Rozova’s Instagram feed, The Spectator wrote that you
can see photos of the 18-year-old’s breakfasts, bikini selfies and
“smart Paris apartment” but you “never see her face”. Why? Because
Luiza “bears a striking resemblance to Vladimir Putin”. 

After Proekt’s exposes were published, Russia’s state media
watchdog blocked the website.

Putin was keen to keep the story out of public view “to protect
his image as the champion of ‘traditional values’”, wrote Roman
Badanin, the former chief editor of Proekt, in The Washington
Post^[8]. 

Almost all of Proekt’s reporters were designated as “foreign
agents” and Russian authorities opened a libel investigation
against three journalists including Badanin, which forced him to
leave his homeland and relocate to the United States. 

‘Glamorous, jet-set lives’

In October, the leaked Pandora
Papers^[9] revealed that
Krivonogikh had bought what The Spectator described as “a lavish $4
million fourth-floor apartment in Monte Carlo Star apartment block
in Monaco” through an offshore shell company. 

The documents also appeared to show her current wealth as
being more than $100m. “In most countries such hair-raising
allegations of sex, money and power would instantly become central
to the national conversation”, but “not in Russia.”

Krivonogikh and her daughter regularly post images of their
“glamorous, jet-set lives” on social media and feel free to do this
without fear of repercussions because of a “climate of fear and an
almost-completely cowed media”, the magazine added.

Rumoured relationship with Olympic
gymnast

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

He has denied having an affair with the gold medallist since
their alleged relationship was first reported by the Moskovsky
Korrespondent in 2008. After publishing the revelations, the
newspaper was forced to shut down. 

In September 2013, Putin’s political
rival Alexei Navalny^[10] claimed that Putin and
Kabaeva had married, but Putin’s spokesman dismissed the claims as
“an internet exercise to relieve boredom”. 

Both Putin and Kabaeva were seen wearing wedding rings at the
2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and Kabaeva was chosen as a torchbearer
at the opening ceremony, rekindling speculation that she was a
favourite of the Russian leader, said the BBC^[11]. 

Kabaeva is “widely assumed to be the mother of a further Putin
brood, numbering possibly four, or two, depending upon which set of
rumours one chooses to believe”, said Forbes^[12]. No Kabaeva children
have ever been publicly confirmed, “including the recent, rumoured
pair of twin boys”. 

In August, Kabaeva made her first public appearance in more than
two-and-a-half years, appearing on the 60 Minutes
political talk show on the Rossiya 1 channel to discuss the 2020
Tokyo Olympics.

“She was not quizzed about Putin, or asked whether she was
Russia’s secret first lady,” reported The Mirror^[13].