One among Vladimir Putin’s daughters flew from Moscow to Munich greater than 50 instances between 2017 and 2019, an investigation has discovered.
The disclosure about Katerina Tikhonova’s quite a few visits to the Bavarian metropolis comes simply two months after her father criticised Russians who spend an excessive amount of time within the west.
In a tirade made shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian president claimed this group “mentally exist there, and never right here”, including that they may very well be a possible “fifth column”.
In addition to acquiring Ms Tikhonova’s flight data, the Russian web site iStories and the German newspaper Der Spiegel gained entry to emails from Russia’s presidential safety service, which steered she had relocated her household to Munich.
The paperwork additionally led to studies that Ms Tikhonova, the youthful of Mr Putin’s two daughters together with his ex-wife Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, is in a relationship with Igor Zelensky, the previous head of the Bavarian State Ballet. He accompanied her on the identical Munich-Moscow flight in 2019.
Mr Zelensky stepped down from his place on the ballet firm in April, citing “non-public household circumstances”. His resignation adopted his silence on the warfare in Ukraine.
An nameless supply on the Bavarian State Ballet mentioned the 52-year-old was “probably the associate of Putin’s daughter”.
The flight logs additionally confirmed a younger youngster travelling with Ms Tikhonova. The lady, believed to be a beforehand unknown grandchild of Mr Putin, was born in 2017, in accordance with a scanned copy of her passport.
Whereas iStories and Der Spiegel selected to not publish her title, they indicated she was prone to be Mr Zelensky’s daughter, as her patronymic Igorevna corresponds to his title.
Ms Tikhonova, a former rock-and-roll dancer, was beforehand married to Russia’s then youngest billionaire, Kirill Shamalov.
The 35-year-old was sanctioned alongside together with her older sister by the US and the EU earlier this yr, as they sought to place monetary stress on Mr Putin’s shut circles over his warfare in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin beforehand labored for the KGB spy company and spent 5 years working in Dresden, East Germany . He speaks German.
