Viktor Khmarin, the son of Vladimir Putin’s classmate at the law department of St. Petersburg State University, was appointed director of RusHydro. Khmarin's appointment was predicted by the media.

Several Kommersant sources reported that Khmarin’s candidacy was finally approved by the board of directors. According to the publication, the contract with Khmarin was concluded for five years.

The issue of appointing a new head of RusHydro arose in November 2020, when its former head Nikolai Shulginov took the post of Minister of Energy instead of Alexander Novak, who moved from the ministry to the government.

In 2013, Forbes wrote that Khmarin Sr. and Putin, in addition to their student youth and judo, which both Khmarin and Putin practiced at the university, are also connected by kinship. The businessman says that Vladimir Putin’s aunt, his father’s sister, Lyudmila Spiridonovna Putina, lives in the Moscow region. Khmarin married her daughter, Lyubov. However, Khmarin Sr. did not have a brilliant career like Putin’s other classmates, for example, businessman Ilgam Ragimov or head of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin. Now his son can make such a career.
RusHydro owns the majority of the country's hydroelectric power plants and is the world's third-largest hydroelectric generating company. A quarter of the country’s entire domestic and drinking water supply is provided by RusHydro. According to the company's reporting for 2019, the company's turnover is 367 billion rubles, and its net profit is 640 million rubles. The controlling shareholder (more than 60% of shares) is the Russian Federation, other shareholders include VTB (13.1%) and Avitrans LLC (5.9%).

RusHydro was headed by the son of a classmate of Vladimir Putin