Russian President Vladimir Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova, a former acrobatic dancer, is apparently in a relationship.
With a Munich-based ballet dancer Igor Zelensky, unrelated to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, though the duo share the same surname. Putin’s daughter and Igor Zelensky might also have a child.
Between 2018 and 2019, Putin’s daughter flew to Munich more than 50 times, a joint investigation by independent Russian media outlet iStories and German magazine Der Spiegel has revealed. Every time, Katerina flew on state chartered flights in the company of employees from Putin’s own presidential security service.
Always shrouded in secrecy, Putin’s personal life and family have come on the radar more after Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine that started in February.
That Putin’s daughter has the record of so many trips to a European country while she might be indeed in a relationship with a dancer who stays in Munich has been criticised by the western media, given Putin’s strong stance against the West.
The investigation has leaked a cache of documents relating to a series of flights between Moscow and Munich, including the passport of a then two-year-old girl, who might be the ‘previously unknown granddaughter’ of Putin.
Who is Igor Zelensky, the probable partner of Putin’s daughter?
According to reports, Igor Zelensky is a 52-year-old dancer who was the director of the Bayerisches Staatsballet until April this year. “He stepped down from his role on 4 April citing “private family reasons”, having failed to react to calls to condemn Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine,” a Guardian report said.
Zelensky has a job on the supervisory board of Russia’s National Cultural Heritage Foundation. “Leading a ballet troupe requires absolute concentration and efficiency. At present, however, personal, family matters require my full attention and time, which is incompatible with my activities as a ballet director in Munich…Now my family needs my support,” he said at the time of his resignation, as reported by Newsweek.
Where are Putin’s daughter and her partner?
The investigators said the current whereabouts of Katerina and Tikhonova are not known. Journalists went to Zelensky’s Munich address but only found his ex-wife, Yana Serebriakova, a former ballet dancer.