What does the public display of Putin’s daughters really mean?

During the same conference, a 13-minute interview on rare diseases with genetic researcher Maria Voroncova was recorded. This interview was broadcast on Russian state television.

Both speeches would likely have disappeared from the extremely rich three-day forum program and would have gone unnoticed were it not for the fact that these two women are said to be the daughters of authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin and the Kremlin have repeatedly refused to confirm or deny such allegations, citing a desire to preserve privacy. However, the identity of the women is considered a public secret.

At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, none of these women asked about her origins, and the only hint of her identity came when the moderator of the discussion group, which included Tichonova, called her “Katerina Vladimirovna.”

Towards the end of the discussion, which was attended by K. Tichonova, the moderator, speaking with the woman, she joked. As The Washington Post wrote, this prompted another participant in the debate, Russian Justice Minister Konstantin Chiyechenko, to silence him and warn him not to interrupt K.

“It just came to our attention then. They have a serious enough professional position. They have their own ambitions … They want to present themselves to the elite of society as independent personalities,” explained Sergei Markov, a political scientist associated with the Kremlin.

Markov added that the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was an ideal venue for such a presentation, as it is essentially a “family event” for Putin and the people around him who live in the city.

“It is no secret that Russia is ruled by people from St. Petersburg, and this most important Russian forum was founded by people from St. Petersburg. It is a forum of the ruling elite of Russia, a forum for the people of St. Petersburg that is held in this city. So, it is logical that family members appear in such a “familiar” forum, “said the political scientist.

Ms. Tichonova and Ms. Voroncova have become a bit more public recently, but their performances at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum have taken publicity to a new level and led to speculation that their public appearances may increase. in the future.

“Why was it necessary to invite these so-called Putin daughters to such an event and what was the purpose of their public speech?” – asks Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the Carnegie Center in Moscow. “Either they have been used for their own purposes by pressure groups, as one might think, especially from the performance of Ms Tikhonova, or it was simply thought that it would be interesting for the external media to show what Putin’s daughters and daughters are saying. how do they look. . “

“Perhaps this is just a small opening of the veil without specifying the actual roles of the president’s daughters. Perhaps it is a kind of anticipation of a certain performance on the big stage ”, considers the political scientist.

Furthermore, the public appearance of his implicit daughters may be an attempt to further strengthen Putin’s own image. Many members of Russia’s ruling elite have been criticized by their sons and other relatives studying or living abroad, while Putin’s daughters reportedly stay and stay in Russia almost all the time.

“This has a positive effect on the image of the president,” explains A. Kolesnikov. – His daughters are so entrepreneurial, professional and immersed in such different careers. One is almost a medical doctor, well, and the other is not very clear about what she does, but she also does some complex activities and speaks publicly about investment issues.

The appearance of Ms Tikhonova in the forum could have been an attempt to strengthen the positions of Kirill Dmitriev, who participated in the same discussion group. K. Dmitriev is the director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. He is also sometimes identified as a possible Putin successor. He and his wife, Natalia Popov, the host of Russian state television, have long-standing close ties to K. Tikhonova and her ex-husband, billionaire Kirill Shamalov. It is reported that J. Tichonova and N. Popova studied together at the university.

Educated at Stanford and Harvard Universities, Dmitrijev made headlines in foreign media in March 2017 when he reported that he had secretly met with Erik Prince, founder of the US private military company Blackwater, in the Seychelles two months ago. Prince denied media reports about ties between him and the team of then-US President-elect Donald Trump and the fact that he had discussed with Dmitrijev the creation of a “secret channel of communication between the two countries. “.

“K. Dmitriev is often cited as a possible successor to Putin. It is no secret to anyone that he is a family friend. We know that he attended the wedding of K. Tikhonova and K. Shamalov,” says Sergei Yezov, a journalist from the The Insider portal.

According to political analyst A. Kolesnikov, K. Dmitrijev’s role in the Russian direct investment fund is extremely important for Putin’s system of government.

“It brings practical benefits because it concludes all these transactions in the government,” explains Kolesnikov. – It turns out that the most important actor is always the government; otherwise this system of state capitalism would not work. The government conducts transactions or allows them to take place. The government is entering into deals for its own benefit. “

“So this man, who is not a minister, does not occupy a very high position in the administration, he has become an extremely powerful person in terms of cash flow, and the powerful have to take this into account, it is very important to implement various projects that are important to the government. This is fully in line with Putin’s understanding of how the economy should work, “Kolesnikov concludes.

It is officially announced that Putin has two daughters from his marriage to Lyudmila. Maria Putin (believed to be Maria Voroncova) was born in Leningrad in April 1985, and Ekaterina Putin (presumably Katerina Tichonova) was born in August 1986 in Dresden, then a city of the German Democratic Republic. Putin refuses to bring up the subject of his daughters. He only said that they live and work in Russia.

“I have never discussed my family’s affairs with anyone,” Putin told a year-end press conference that turned into a marathon in 2015. – Everyone has a right to their own destiny. They live their separate lives and they do so with dignity. “

Putin and his wife divorced in 2014.

At the same annual press conference in 2017, Putin said he had two grandchildren, but did not provide any details except that one of them “was already in kindergarten” and the other was “recently” born.

In 2020, Russia’s independent investigative journalism project Projekt announced that Putin had another daughter, Yelizavet, who was born in 2003. According to him, this daughter is the result of an affair with a woman named Svetlana Krivonogich.

According to Russian media reports, Putin also has a daughter born in 2015 and twins born in 2019, whom he had with his former gymnast and State Duma deputy Alina Kabayeva. Putin has never confirmed long-standing rumors about his relationship with Kabayeva.