Vladimir Putin’s youngest daughter is an occasional DJ who has lived in Paris under a pseudonym, according to reports.
While the Russian president officially has two daughters with his ex-wife, who has remarried as Lyudmila Ocheretnaya after she and Putin were divorced in 2014, he is also alleged to have had a daughter with a woman named Svetlana Krivonogikh.
In a report in 2020, independent Russian outlet Proekt said Ms Krovonogikh, a former economics student and cleaner from St Petersburg, had been close to Putin at the turn of the millennium and, in 2003, had a daughter who “bears an uncanny resemblance” to him.
While it was dubbed “gutter press” by the Kremlin, the report alleged that Ms Krovonigh had received substantial gifts from Putin’s friends and owned assets worth around $100m, with the UK government last year sanctioning her for owning shares in the pro-Ukraine war National Media Group.
The late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation also alleged in 2021 that Ms Krivonogikh – who was named in the Pandora Papers leak that same year – had received property and shares from Mr Putin’s friends after their daughter was born.
Her daughter Elizaveta has now been reported in Ukrainian media to haved lived in Paris under the name Elizaveta Olegovna Rudnova, and to have studied at the ICART international school of art management.
The middle name Olegovna, as opposed to Vladimirovna, means “daughter of Oleg”. A close friend of Mr Putin prior to his death in 2015, Oleg Rudnov, was previously reported to have carried out personal tasks for the Russian president, including purchasing property for Ms Krivonogikh, now aged 49.
Russian outlet Agentstvo also reported this week that it had analysed a leaked airline database and confirmed that a person named Elizaveta Olegovna Rudnova had previously purchased flight tickets and had the same date of birth and phone number as Elizaveta Krivonogikh.
️It cited a leaked border database as showing that the 21-year-old last flew abroad to Paris in May 2021, before flying from the Russian resort city of Sochi to St Petersburg two months later.
Following the initial report about her identity in 2020, Ms ️Krovonogikh told a Proekt journalist in a conversation on social media app Clubhouse that she was “very grateful” for the publicity.
She said: “I’d hit a rut in life. Things had stagnated. I’m very grateful that I got this opportunity – that I lit up like this and people saw my account [on Instagram]. I’ve never tried to be popular, but … I’m feeling great, so don’t you worry about me.
“I don’t follow politics at all. I’m busy with the things I like,” she said, adding: “I live my own life and I’m busy with fashion. It’s not the centre of my life, but I like it. I’m not going to stop doing everything I was doing because of your investigation. I’m still living the same life and talking to the same friends.”
A report in the Moscow Times in 2021 said there had been consternation among frequenters of a progressive bar in the Russian capital which had hosted a DJ set by a woman believed to be Mr Putin’s daughter, using the same pseudonym mentioned in this week’s reports.
Ms Krivonogikh is not the only reported child of Russia’s elite to have lived in European capitals, as their parents engage in what they increasingly paint as an existential battle against the West following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The son of Mr Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has previously lived in Paris, while his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s stepdaughter lived in London.
Mr Putin is also rumoured to have had children in an affair with Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, which he has always angrily denied. In 2008, a Moscow newspaper was closed down within hours of writing about the alleged affair.
