Translated material
Dominion of the best
First scene
Dominion of the best
The story of how Vladimir Putin employed 26 of his relatives
November 10, 2025
Characters:
Vladimir Putin and his family, distant relatives and lovers, Boris Yeltsin and his family, as well as Gennady Timchenko, Nikolai Shamalov and other minor characters.
The rule of the best is the original meaning of the word “aristocracy”, as it was understood in Ancient Greece. The Hellenes believed that aristocracy was a successful form of government, provided that the best were a sample of absolutely all citizens of the state. Over time, however, only a select few began to call themselves aristocrats, whose superiority was passed on by inheritance, or less often due to belonging to some kind of activity, for example, military service.
As you know, ~~Vladimir Putin~~ comes from a very simple family. Sports gave him his first start to a great career. Thanks to the efforts of his coach, recidivist Leonid Usvyatsov, young Putin was enrolled in the Faculty of Law of Leningrad University under the so-called “sports quota” - that is, bypassing the main competition, but pledging to defend the honor of the university in all kinds of competitions 
. As follows from a number of memoirs, Usvyatsov, using his sports connections, was able to negotiate with the university to enroll a promising athlete ×
. The competition for admission to the law faculty in the year when Putin got there was 40 applicants per place. In order to get into the university as a graduate of a school with a specialization in chemistry (however, the future president had a “C” in chemistry), Putin had to demonstrate remarkable athletic talents.
According to the testimony of peers, student Putin, while studying at the university, really did a lot of wrestling, representing the Trud society and Leningrad State University at various tournaments. He even became a mentor for his classmate Vladimir Cheryomushkin, who wanted to engage in wrestling (Cheryomushkin died from a spinal fracture during one of the fights in 1973). It is believed that it was during his student years that Putin became a master of sports. However, some people who knew the president from the wrestling section wondered whether the future president really had such a sports title ×
.
The second big boost to Putin’s career came from his service in the KGB. It was as an officer of this special service that Putin came to Leningrad University for the second time in 1990 - he was hired as assistant to the rector for international affairs. KGB veterans are confident that Putin was delegated to the university by an “office” - at that time, every university had a special services officer, who also looked after foreign students
. One of the KGB veterans told the Project that an active officer of the “office”, by definition, could not find this job himself, which means the position at the university was a KGB assignment. Putin's former head of the Leningrad KGB, Oleg Kalugin, called the current Russian leader a “KGB resident” at Leningrad State University ×
. Three months later, Putin already has a new job - he, again in state security uniform, became an assistant to the future mayor of St. Petersburg ~~Anatoly Sobchak~~ .
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Sports and the KGB. But Putin’s career received the most decisive boost thanks to Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, who appointed yesterday’s intelligence officer first as prime minister and then as acting head of state. However, to be precise, Putin’s career acceleration was given not only and not so much by Yeltsin himself, but by a group of people who were called “family” in the press of that time. It included Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko (who held positions in the presidential administration), as well as her boyfriend and later husband Valentin Yumashev (including working as the head of Yeltsin’s administration). The “family” also included businessmen close to the throne (Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich, and sometimes Alexander Mamut and Sergei Pugachev), as well as the last head of the Yeltsin administration, Alexander Voloshin.
“Operation Putin was invented and implemented by the family. Vladimir Putin would not have become president if Yumashev had not offered to bet on this unknown security officer, if Dyachenko had not persuaded her father to agree to the early transfer of power, if Voloshin had not built the pre-election administrative vertical,” wrote Kommersant magazine. Power”, which belonged to Berezovsky, in 2003, when the oligarch himself had already been expelled from both the “family” and the country. Much later, members of the “family” secretly lamented that they had provided Putin with power. “Eight years have passed. In 2000, we handed over to the boss a well-oiled machine. Everything worked. And what did you get? - Yumashev says in 2008 in a private conversation with banker Sergei Pugachev. Recording made in Pugachev’s office, quoted from Katherine Belton’s book “Putin’s People” ×
. Publicly, the Yeltsin family has always denied the fact that Putin, upon gaining power in 1999, gave the outgoing president and his relatives any personal guarantees. So, for example, Tatyana Dyachenko said in an interview with Medved magazine in 2009 ×
. This is doubtful. In the last years of Yeltsin's rule, his family appeared in anti-corruption investigations. Yeltsin's political opponents sought revenge, including for the loss in the 1996 presidential elections, in which the Kremlin committed gross violations of the law in order to defeat the communists. On December 31, 1999, the same day Yeltsin resigned early and appointed Putin as acting president, the new leader signed a decree guaranteeing the immunity of his predecessor and members of his family. This was actually Putin’s first decree at the head of Russia. And it was very useful for Yeltsin - throughout the year 2000, critics of the first president of Russia tried to repeal the decree in order to still achieve a trial of the “family”. Almost a hundred State Duma deputies appealed to the Constitutional Court with a request about the legality of Putin’s decree ×
. As a result, a year later, instead of a decree, Putin introduced an entire federal law on the same topic - it is still in force in Russia now, it guaranteed the immunity of not only the Yeltsin family, but also the Putins in the period 2008-2012, as well as the Medvedevs after 2012.
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So Putin understood the importance of family - at least in the literal sense of the word - literally from the first day of his reign. At first, however, it seemed that Putin himself did not really need to rely on his relatives in power - both due to his age and health, he could cope with the work alone.
But 25 years have passed, and the Project’s research records a paradoxical fact:
The number of Putin’s relatives and friends in power or large business associated with the state is many times greater than the Yeltsin family.
In different years and not always at the same time, there were only three relatives in Yeltsin’s ruling “family”: Dyachenko - advisor to the president and advisor to the head of the presidential administration, Yumashev - advisor to the president (twice) and head of the presidential administration, and another son-in-law of the president, Valery Okulov, husband of the president’s eldest daughter Elena Yeltsina (in her first marriage, married to Sergei Fefilov). Okulov was a civil aviation pilot who worked in Sverdlovsk, where Yeltsin built his party career. According to recollections, the future president himself contributed to the acquaintance of his daughter, unhappy in her first marriage, with a young pilot (he was also married). In the 90s, yesterday’s navigator headed Aeroflot, the national air carrier, and later even became a member of the government.
With a very big stretch, one can include the president’s wife Naina Yeltsina and another son-in-law of the president, Alexei (Leonid) Dyachenko, as members of the “family.” Until 2000, he was the husband of Tatyana Yeltsina, who had already been married twice before - to Vilen Khairullin and Andrei Zonov.
Naina Yeltsina never held government positions during her husband’s life, but according to historical evidence, she had considerable influence on her husband, including in political matters. As former Press Minister Mikhail Poltoranin later recalled, Yeltsin, for example, could convince her husband to make this or that personnel decision. And as two of the Project’s interlocutors recalled, only the spouse could have a sobering effect on the spouse during moments of alcohol abuse, which happened often ×
.
Dyachenko worked for the state only in his youth - he, like his father, is a rocketry design engineer. Then Dyachenko went into business (at one time he worked in the same company with Putin’s close friend Gennady Timchenko), but participated in the life of the “family” - it was he who financially helped publish the book “Notes of the President,” written by Yumashev for Yeltsin.
With an even greater stretch, one can include billionaire and owner of large metallurgical assets Oleg Deripaska among Yeltsin’s relatives who rose to fame through this relationship. He was married to Yumashev's daughter Polina, but the marriage took place in early 2001, when Yeltsin had already left the presidency.
Deripaska achieved most of his business successes under Putin, including thanks to his connections with the state. There are memories that the Izmailovo criminal group, with which Deripaska was associated in the 90s, sought to ensure that their man became related to someone at the top - either the daughter of Boris Berezovsky, or the heiress of Yeltsin. Deripaska's former colleague in the metallurgical business, Jalol Khaidarov, recalled this ×
. We don’t know whether it was a marriage of convenience, but we still classify Deripaska as one of the presidential relatives who took part in governing the country.
Thus, even in its most expanded composition, Yeltsin’s political “family” included two blood relatives of the president and three in-laws. And what about Putin?
~~Lyudmila Putina~~ , of course, did not have the same degree of influence on her husband as Naina Yeltsina once had on her husband. Often, long before the divorce in 2013, Putin did not even take his wife with him to protocol events or on those trips where it was more appropriate for the family to be together. At the end of his first presidential term, in January 2004, Putin appeared alone at a Christmas service in a Suzdal church.
The parishioners then asked the president where his wife was. At a big religious holiday, and at the beginning of the election campaign, it would really be logical for the high family to be together. Putin answered something strange: he said that his wife had celebrated her own birthday the day before and therefore could not be there. The Kremlin did not explain the president’s words and everyone could speculate to the best of their depravity: either the president’s wife drank too much on the eve of Christmas, or celebrated her birthday somewhere separate from her husband. But the truth was even worse - a few months before coming to church, Putin had an illegitimate child, daughter Elizaveta, in his secret family with St. Petersburg woman Svetlana Krivonogikh. The marriage to Lyudmila was apparently hanging by a thread. Soon after the trip to Suzdal, something else will happen in the Putin family, which perfectly describes the insignificant degree of influence Lyudmila has on her husband.
June 2004. As soon as he became president for the second time, Putin (this time with his wife and a large delegation) went on a visit to Mexico. There, in addition to official events and meetings, one non-public meeting took place - the famous documentarian Igor Shadkhan came to the Putins’ room for a reception. He had known Putin since the early 90s, when he conducted his first television interview with the then St. Petersburg official. Then Shadkhan met Putin more than once and filmed him for his documentaries, but over the years, the director’s charm with the politician gradually disappeared. In new films, Shadkhan has already allowed himself to criticize the actions of the head of state. Shadkhan had been asking for a conversation with Putin for a long time, and an opportunity arose in Mexico - the documentarian was there on the same dates to film a documentary. While talking with Putin, Shadkhan hinted at the danger of autocracy, to which there was an unexpected reaction... from the first lady. Lyudmila supported the director, telling her husband that he was in vain to run for a second presidential term. She was impulsive, something like hysteria happened to her. The episode is reproduced according to the memoirs of Shadkhan’s acquaintance, who learned about it from the director himself shortly before his death in 2014, as well as the memoirs of the widow Natalya Shadkhan ×
. The scene was uncomfortable for everyone. Shadkhan left, his good relationship with the president came to an end.
Putin, of course, did not listen to his wife, and after about ten years he officially divorced her - they had ceased to be a full-fledged family long before that. This, however, did not stop Putin from providing his abandoned wife and her new chosen one ~~Arthur Ocheretny~~ with expensive property at public expense (Lyudmila’s new family now lives on this money).
Surprisingly, Putin’s unofficial companions participated in the governance of Russia noticeably more than the legal one. Svetlana Krivonogikh , the president's secret mistress, was the first of his relatives to receive a part of the country. Early in Putin's rule, she became a shareholder in Rossiya Bank, which once held money for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was later privatized by the president's friends.
Krivonogikh also entered into the capital of several large companies together with oligarch Yuri Kovalchuk, Putin’s closest adviser and friend. Formally speaking, Krivonogikh owns almost 3% in Rossiya Bank, and through it she owns shares in the National Media Group and the largest insurance company Sogaz. In recent years, Rossiya has not disclosed information about its shareholders, so the data provided describes the situation as of 2018 ×
. In other words, Krivonogikh, although her affair with Putin is long in the past, is still involved in large business associated with the state.
The next (of the known to us) Putin's mistresses is the famous gymnast ~~Alina Kabaeva~~ - in 2007 she received the post of State Duma deputy, and after finishing her term she headed the board of directors of the National Media Group (NMG), which controls 9 Russian TV channels. The media that are part of the NMG are an important part of the machine of state censorship and propaganda, which is why Kabaeva, even after leaving the seat of a deputy, actively participates in government administration.
By the way, these are not all Putin’s women who were endowed with power or state-related business. The most outlandish case of this kind will be described in the fifth scene of our special project, but for now let’s move on to the blood relatives of the president.
~~Mikhail Shelomov~~ , Vladimir Putin’s cousin on his mother’s side, was for the time being a poor relative who worked part-time in a photo studio. At the beginning of the Putin era, Shelomov was employed by the state company Sovcomflot, photographing ships for booklets. But a job in a state-owned company is not what the uncle prepared for his nephew.
In the middle of Putin’s first term, Shelomov was registered with the Acceptance company, which has shares in the country’s largest insurance company Sogaz, the Igora Drive race track near the resort of the same name in the Leningrad region, Rossiya Bank, as well as 100% of SOGAZ Real Estate (owns premises worth more than two billion rubles). All these businesses, as in the case of Krivonogi, are closely connected with the state. The president's nephew is also the nominal owner of a four-story villa in the Kremlin's Rus sanatorium in Sochi. At the same time, the “billionaire” himself recently drove a six-year-old Volkswagen Touareg, lived on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, and in the summer he vacationed in a village house in the Tver wilderness, where he personally assembled a street toilet from boards.
Now let's move on to the paternal line. Putin once let it slip that he personally appointed ~~Viktor Khmarin~~ as the head of RusHydro and was even worried whether the new duty station in Krasnoyarsk (where the company's head office is located) would suit his wife. This state-owned company is the largest energy structure in the country, however, following the rules, its leader should be elected not by the president, but by the board of directors. But Putin was worried not because of the violation of protocol, but because of his relative. The President never advertised that Khmarin was his cousin, who also reminded him of sensitive episodes of his youth.
Let's start with the fact that Khmarin is not only a nephew, but at the same time the son of Putin's classmate at the Law Faculty of Leningrad State University, also a sambo wrestler ~~Viktor Khmarin Sr.~~ . There is a version according to which, even before meeting his future wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva, Putin fell in love with another Lyudmila, Khmarin’s sister, who was studying to become a doctor. Journalists from Moskovsky Komsomolets claimed that the couple even submitted an application to the registry office, but then the future president ran away from the bride. Even if this was so, classmates still became related.
In 1976, Khmarin married the cousin of the future president, Lyubov Kruglova, the daughter of his paternal aunt, Lyudmila Spiridonovna. Two years later, the Khmarins had a son, whom Putin sent to head RusHydro in 2021. Khmarin Sr. (that is, Putin’s son-in-law), like his wife, have been earning money from Gazprom contracts for a long time, and they are not the only relatives of Putin associated with the gas monopolist.
Another cousin is ~~Mikhail Putin~~ (grandson of Mikhail Spiridonovich Putin, brother of Putin’s father), a psychiatrist by training. His uncle began to move him upward at the same time as Shelomov, but along a different path. In 2004, Mikhail headed the medical department of Gazprom, after which he worked as deputy head of the board of Sogaz, and in 2018 he was appointed deputy chairman of the entire Gazprom. On this occasion, the management of the state gas monopoly convened for an extraordinary remote meeting - “About Putin M.E.” read the meeting agenda.
The Kremlin tried to prove that Mikhail achieved everything on his own, because he “actually does not communicate” with his uncle.
, according to the presidential press secretary ~~Dmitry Peskov~~ ×
. It was a lie: the president knew Mikhail’s family well, and called his father Evgeniy, that is, his cousin, “the keeper of the family memory (of the Putins).”
, according to Oleg Blotsky’s book “Vladimir Putin” ×
.
Third generation
In general, Putin and his entourage quickly realized that relatives are needed not only for state administration, but are no less useful in business - as formal holders of assets. The president classifies not only ~~Shelomov~~ as “businessmen.” The son of ~~Mikhail Putin~~ twenty-eight year old ~~Denis~~ in May 2025 became a co-owner of the Sheremetyevo international business center, this is a modern multifunctional complex near the airport of the same name in Moscow (for example, there is an expensive hotel there). It is significant that in this enterprise Putin is partnering with another heir - Andrei Gromov, the son of the long-term governor of the Moscow region ~~Boris Gromov~~ (despite the fact that Gromov left his post a long time ago, he is mentioned more than once in our project, since he is connected by business and family ties with many today's officials). Denis is already the third generation of Putins in the Russian elite.
The servants copy their idol in this too. Even at the beginning of the Putin era, two of his close associates, originally from the KGB, showed how cunningly they knew how to cook things up. Olga, at that time the young daughter of Alexander Grigoriev, Putin’s colleague in the Leningrad KGB, was registered in 2004 as a shareholder of Gazprom’s largest contractor at that time, Stroygazconsulting. To own such a business, the Grigoriev family had neither money, nor knowledge, nor experience, but they had kinship and acquaintances. A little later, Olga also became a shareholder in the large construction company LSR Group, which belongs to the stepson of Putin’s former colleague at Leningrad University.
In SMP Bank, the first big business of the brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, another of Putin’s KGB colleagues, Georgy Poltavchenko, received a share (he worked as a presidential plenipotentiary and governor of St. Petersburg in different years). The shares were registered in the name of the sister-in-law of a retired security officer - her name is Irina Vasilyeva. Later, Poltavchenko’s son became the Rotenbergs’ “partner” in the construction business.
However, the phenomenon of status relatives among shareholders of various enterprises is much, much broader.
Mikhail's sister ~~Tatyana~~ (that is, another cousin of Putin) was eventually appointed deputy head physician of the clinic by the Presidential Administration
. She worked there until 2021 ×
. Her daughter, ~~Elena Zhidkova~~ , that is, Putin’s great-niece, headed Russian Railways Medicine, the medical division of the state railways, in 2022.
But another sister of Mikhail and another niece of Putin soared higher than anyone else in this medical family. Her name is ~~Anna Tsivileva~~ . Since the mid-2000s, Anna, who, like her brother, was a psychiatrist-narcologist by training, made a dizzying career, first in business related to the state (she received a share and a management position in the Kolmar coal company), and then in the civil service. In 2024, Tsivileva was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense - she oversees veterans' issues (and also heads the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation, created by the state against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine).
Her husband, that is, Putin's son-in-law named ~~Sergey Tsivilev~~ , is also confidently moving up - first he was made the governor of an important industrial region, the Kemerovo region, and now he is the Russian Minister of Energy. The entire career of both is filled with conflicts of interest and suspicious facts. The Tsivilev family did not have the money or experience to buy a coal business - the wife worked in a psychiatric clinic, and the husband was a military sailor.
Ownership of a coal business, as well as joint business interests with Putin’s friend Gennady Timchenko, it was thanks to him that the Tsivilevs entered the capital of Kolmar ×
, is an obvious conflict of interest for the Secretary of Energy. The joint work of spouses in the government itself is a conflict of interest. But this does not bother the Kremlin, because the only reason for the success of the Tsivilev family is their relationship with the president.
Another branch of the presidential relatives on the paternal side comes from Ryazan. These Putins did not achieve such great success in their state careers, but they also succeeded using their origins. ~~Igor Putin~~ (the president’s cousin) and his son ~~Roman Putin~~ (another cousin) made a career of “amulets” - they were taken into the management of companies that wanted to protect themselves from racketeering and government audits with the help of big names. Igor worked on the board of Master Bank and was a member of the board of directors of the Russian Land Bank and Promsberbank. All three banks participated in the cashing and withdrawal of money from the country and, after many years of criminal activity, were nevertheless declared bankrupt, and their management came under investigation. But not a relative of the president. The actions of Igor Putin were investigated only in the West - he was one of the participants in a money laundering scheme through the Estonian branch of Danske Bank. Igor’s son Roman Putin, after serving in the FSB, went into business, at the same time working as an adviser to regional officials, who, like any civil servant, wanted to have someone with a sonorous surname nearby. In 2020, Roman created and led a party whose name, no matter how ironic it may sound, is “People Against Corruption”
. Five months later it was closed ×
.
Igor Putin’s niece (and therefore Vladimir Putin’s cousin) ~~Vera Podguzova~~ began her career in the St. Petersburg branch of United Russia, where in 2007 she worked as editor-in-chief of the party magazine. Two years later, Vera became a municipal deputy. Later she was involved in promoting the “Made in Russia” brand, and in 2019 she was appointed senior vice president of Promsvyazbank. This is a key bank for the military-industrial complex and the Ministry of Defense, which is headed by ~~Petr Fradkov~~ , the son of Putin's old friend ~~Mikhail Fradkov~~ .
Finally, another Mikhail Putin, the second cousin of the president, and cousin of Mikhail Putin from Gazprom, became the “amulet”. Against the backdrop of criminal cases against the Tatar company Kazdorstroy, Mikhail became head of this company in February 2025, and left it a few months later ×
.
Putin has not only nephews, but also children. His heirs from his unions with Krivonogikh and Kabaeva are still too young to think about a big career, but the daughters from his marriage to Lyudmila are already making full use of their father’s name to decorate their resume with work related to the state.
~~Maria Putina~~ , using the surname Vorontsova, is an endocrinologist, works as deputy dean of the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine of Moscow State University. She is also a co-owner of the New Medical Company. This organization claims to be developing technologies in the field of healthcare, and its only customer was the Sogaza clinic, which is under the control of Putin’s relatives and proxies.
Maria's first (common-law) husband was the Dutchman ~~Jorrit Faassen~~ - their son Roman was born in 2012. So that the foreigner would not sit idle, he was first registered to work at Gazprom, and then in the structures of Putin’s friend Arkady Rotenberg. There was a position, but there was no real work for him. After his divorce from Putina, Faassen became a victim of his choice: a criminal case was opened against him in the Netherlands for violating sanctions
. The case was related to the purchase of a plot of land in the Netherlands through a Cypriot company associated with Putin’s “wallet”. In 2024, the prosecutor's office dropped the charges ×
. Maria’s second husband (again, a common-law husband) was ~~Evgeny Nagorny~~ , who works at the gas company Novatek, whose shareholder is the same Putin friend Gennady Timchenko. In 2017, Maria and Evgeniy had a son, Andrei.
The president's youngest daughter ~~Katerina~~ took the surname Tikhonov and went to work at Moscow State University, where she became deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems. In 2012, the National Intellectual Development Foundation, better known as Innopraktika, was established at the university. It was headed by Tikhonova. The fund's main donors are state-owned companies such as Transneft, Rosneft and Rosatom, as well as the richest oligarchs. According to the idea, Innopraktika was supposed to become an accelerator for breakthrough scientific ideas, but in reality it was engaged in a development project on the territory of the university.
It is important to remember that ~~Kirill Shamalov~~ , the first husband of Katerina Putina, himself comes from a “noble” family in modern times. Kirill is the heir to his father Nikolai Shamalov, who has known Putin since the late 80s or early 90s. Shamalov Sr., with the help of Putin, enriched himself for many years through government contracts (he supplied medical equipment from Germany). In the 2000s, Nicholas was considered one of the nobles closest to the throne. He made his eldest son Yuri the head of the largest non-state pension fund, Gazfond, with the help of which Putin’s entourage controls one of the country’s largest banks, Gazprombank. The youngest son Kirill, having barely gotten together with Katerina, received a large share in the petrochemical giant Sibur as a dowry (Putin’s friend Gennady Timchenko again took part in this act of corruption). By the way, when Kirill cheated on Katerina and the couple separated, Putin’s unlucky son-in-law lost his shares in Sibur, and his father lost his shares in Rossiya Bank.
. At least both stopped appearing in the reporting ×
. Katerina’s next husband (again a civilian) was choreographer ~~Igor Zelensky~~ , advisor to the director of the State Moscow Academic Musical Theater.
In 2020, Tikhonova also headed the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at Moscow State University. Another interesting character took part in the creation of this establishment - ~~Kirill Dmitriev~~ . He is not related to the president, but very close.
Each of the president's relatives, getting into high positions, pulled their own people with them - relatives and friends. Dmitriev, an American-educated Ukrainian, became an important figure through personal friendships with Putin's daughters. In 2011, he was appointed head of the state-owned Russian Direct Investment Fund, which manages assets of more than $10 billion. And in 2025, he also became a negotiator with the American administration on the Ukrainian issue.
Dmitriev’s wife ~~Natalya Popova~~ worked as Tikhonova’s deputy at Innopraktika. The Russian elite under Putin is essentially diverging and often intersecting circles of Putin’s relatives and friends, their friends, their relatives, and so on.
So that you can see how much larger Putin’s “family” is than Yeltsin’s, we have depicted two family trees. Thus, during the 25 years of Putin’s rule, at least 26 of his relatives worked in government bodies and in large businesses associated with the authorities. If we add to the successful relatives the exalted friends and personal bodyguards of Putin, who are near him more often than other close people, it turns out that the total number of “Putin’s” in the Russian leadership has exceeded 50.
Families and “Families” of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin
Relatives and confidants of presidents who received positions, influence and wealth during their terms of office
Boris Yeltsin •Relatives•
Tatyana Yumasheva Daughter, Advisor to the President and Advisor to the Head of the Presidential Administration
Valentin Yumashev Son-in-law, head of the presidential administration, presidential adviser
Valery Okulov Son-in-law, CEO of Aeroflot, Deputy Minister of Transport
Oleg Deripaska Son-in-law, billionaire, government contractor
Naina Yeltsina Wife
•Trusted persons•
Boris Berezovsky Deputy Secretary of the Security Council, billionaire
Sergei Pugachev Billionaire, government contractor
Alexander Mamut Billionaire
Roman Abramovich Billionaire
Alexander Voloshin Head of the Presidential Administration
Vladimir Putin •Relatives•
Alina Kabaeva Wife, common-law wife, Chairman of the Board of Directors of NMG
Maria Vorontsova Daughter, member of the academic council of Moscow State University
Katerina Tikhonova Daughter, head of the Innopraktika Foundation
Lyudmila Ocheretnaya Ex-wife, receives hundreds of millions of rubles from state banks and the Moscow mayor's office
Svetlana Krivonogikh Mistress, co-owner of Rossiya Bank
Alisa Kharcheva Lover, father - employee of ANO "Dialogue"
Anna Tsivileva Great niece, Deputy Minister of Defense
Sergei Tsivilev Husband of my cousin’s niece, Minister of Energy
Dmitry Loginov Great-great-nephew, owner of companies associated with the Kolmar coal company
Mikhail E. Putin Cousin nephew, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Gazprom
Denis Putin Great-great-nephew, works at Sibur, ex-Gazprom employee
Tatyana Ptashuk Great niece, deputy head physician of the clinic, Presidential Administration
Elena Zhidkova Great-great-great-niece, Director of Medicine of Russian Railways
Mikhail Shelomov Cousin, nominal owner of assets important to Putin
Vera Podguzova Great niece, senior vice president of Promsvyazbank
Igor Putin Cousin, ex-head of the Pechenga port, former member of the Maritime Board
Roman Putin Cousin, former FSB officer
Viktor Khmarin Cousin's husband, former major supplier to Gazprom, owner of Nefteproductservis
Victor Khmarin Jr. Cousin nephew, CEO of RusHydro
Igor Zelensky Son-in-law, choreographer, oversees the construction of a theater in Sevastopol
Kirill Shamalov Former son-in-law, ex-co-owner of Sibur
Nikolay Shamalov Former matchmaker, ex-co-owner of Rossiya Bank
Yuri Shamalov Brother of former son-in-law, president of Gazfond
Evgeny Nagorny Son-in-law, head of Murmansk-Transgaz
Jorrit Faassen Former son-in-law, ex-manager of Gazprom and Stroytransgaz
Arthur Ocheretny Husband of his ex-wife, adviser to the head of Promstroybank
•Trusted persons•
Yuri Kovalchuk Friend, main owner of Rossiya Bank
Mikhail Kovalchuk Friend, President of the Kurchatov Institute
Boris Kovalchuk Son of a friend, Chairman of the Accounts Chamber
Kirill Kovalchuk Son of a friend, former president of the National Media Group
Stepan Kovalchuk Grandson of a friend, vice-president of VKontakte
Arkady Rotenberg Friend, largest government contractor
Boris Rotenberg Brother of a friend, vice-president of the judo federation, government contractor
Roman Rotenberg Son of a friend's brother, head coach of the Russian youth hockey team
Sergey Roldugin Friend, conductor of the Mariinsky Theater, artistic director of the House of Music, holder of offshore companies
Vladimir Litvinenko Scientific director, billionaire, Phosagro shareholder
Vladimir Kolbin Friend, director of the port of Gelendzhik, holder of assets associated with Putin’s palace
Gennady Timchenko Friend, billionaire government contractor
Viktor Medvedchuk Kum, Ukrainian politician and businessman
Does the president really love his close and distant relatives so much that he provides them with careers and prosperity? It's hard to judge, but it's worth remembering a few facts.
Putin almost never comments on the lives and successes of his loved ones. His three heirs live under fictitious names; his father never even acknowledged the fact that Masha, Katya and Liza (the daughter of Svetlana Krivonogikh also used the names Luiza Rozova and Elizaveta Rudnova) were his daughters, preferring the phrase “these women.” Alina Kabaeva and the two sons she gave birth to from the president are generally hidden from the public - they use cover documents and most of the time live under guard in Putin’s residence in Valdai. Мальчиков зовут Владимир и Иван Спиридоновы (Спиридоном звали деда Владимира Путина).
Maria Vorontsova
От Людмилы Путиной * 
Katerina Tikhonova
От Людмилы Путиной * 
Елизавета Руднова (Розова)
От Светланы Кривоногих * 
Иван Спиридонов
От Алины Кабаевой * 
Владимир Спиридонов
От Алины Кабаевой
Родство с ~~Анной Цивилевой~~ и ее мужем Путин никогда не комментировал, хотя они работают непосредственно в правительстве, которое подчинено президенту, а стало быть для Путина это прямой конфликт интересов. Про своего племянника во главе «Газпрома», про единственного из всей родни, Путин устами пресс-секретаря сказал хоть что-то более или менее определенное, хотя и соврал (опровергать родство было бы трудно с учетом того, что замглавы «Газпрома» носит родовую фамилию президента).
Зато Путин любит рассуждать на людях о тех своих родственниках, кто уже умер. Рассказы про деда Спиридона, который был поваром у Ленина и Сталина; про простую жизнь родителей, которые приучили его всегда выключать за собой свет; история о том, как в начале войны отцу в составе диверсионного отряда НКВД пришлось прятаться в болоте и дышать через соломинку — все это непременный атрибут едва ли не любого интервью президента.
Но зачастую президент начинает фантазировать, путаться или врать. Рассказывая историю чудесного спасения матери во время блокады, он в одном случае в статье для журнала «Русский пионер» ×
приписывает эту заслугу собственному отцу, который, дескать, увидел, как жену, еще живую, бросили в груду трупов. В более раннем интервью для книги «От первого лица ×
Путин утверждал, что отец во время этого эпизода был на фронте. Создавая собственную мифологию, Путин путается даже в датах смерти своих родителей. Как известно из многочисленных источников, Мария умерла в 1998-м, а Владимир примерно год спустя. Но в статье для «Русского пионера» Путин все перепутал с точностью до наоборот. Про отношения в родительской семье Путин всякий раз рассказывает нечто наподобие «жития святых»: семейные ценности, взаимоуважение, любовь и ни одного бранного слова в доме. И ни разу Путин не раскрыл важное обстоятельство из жизни своих родителей: их брак был вынужденным, потому что на стадии ухаживания Владимир-старший в буйстве выколол Марии один глаз ударом вил, отчего сам парень мог отправиться в тюрьму, а девушка — остаться старой девой.