Paranoid despot Vladimir Putin runs Russia with an iron fist — which makes it hard for most people to imagine him as a father behind closed doors.
But the Russian premier’s family life was sharply brought into the spotlight this week when a Ukrainian journalist confronted one of his alleged daughters, Elizaveta Rudnova, 22, near her home in Paris and said Putin was responsible for his brother’s death.
“What does that have to do with me?” She shot back in the exchange, caught on video.
Like other children Putin is alleged to have fathered, Rudnova leads a very unusual life.
“You’re carrying a big load of bricks if you’re a child of Putin,” author John O’Neill, who has extensively studied and written about Russia, told The Post.
Putin, 73, only has two ‘official’ daughters — Maria Vorontsova, 40, and Katerina Tikhonova, 39 — with his first wife, former Aeroflot flight attendant Lyudmila Putin.
The couple divorced after almost 30 years of marriage in 2013, after years of speculation Putin had a secret child — now believed to be Rudnova — with another woman a decade earlier. Biological links between Putin and Rudnova, along with other children he is alleged to have fathered years later have never been proven.
Rudnova was born in 2003 and raised largely by her mom, a former cleaner in Russia, who now boasts a reported $105 million empire.
Putin is also believed to have fathered two sons, aged nine and five, with another woman — Olympic rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, who was once hailed as “Russia’s most flexible woman.”
The boys and their mother are said to live in a forest compound ringed by an air-defense system, are home-schooled and do not mix with other children.
There are also rumors of 10-year-old twin daughters. But it’s not publicly known if they really exist, let alone if Putin fathered them.
The Russian President is so fiercely protective and private about his family, not even his acknowledged daughters — Vorontsova, an endocrinologist, or Tikhonova, a project director — have ever been publicly pictured with him.
“Putin learned to be able to act in a very clever way from his service in [ex-Russian security service] the KGB. He’s the guy whose eyes you can’t read,” said O’Neill, author of “The Dancer and the Devil.”
“And now he has to isolate his children for fear of people assassinating them, and him.
“Whatever family life he has is secret. Everything about him is secret. Firstly, because of assassination fears. And secondly, because Putin would be afraid of what they might hear or say – and for one to then go out and spill the beans.”
Putin will also never acknowledge alleged children born out of wedlock, because of his religious beliefs, according to O’Neill.
“He purports to be a religious Orthodox leader so he knows that would look bad for him to have multiple mistresses and children from more than one woman,” he said.
“He has to come across as a family guy – and he already has one divorce and two daughters.”
Here’s what life is like for his alleged children:
Elizaveta Rudnova
Elizaveta Rudnova, who also goes by the alias Luiza Rozova, bears a striking resemblance to Putin and has become the most talked-about “maybe-daughter” in Russia.
She is widely believed to be the daughter of Putin and Svetlana Krivonogikh, 50, who reportedly had an affair with him in 2003 while working as a housecleaner at one of his luxury compounds.
In 2020, after the Russian outlet Proekt revealed her family connection to Putin, Rudnova’s social media following exploded — and so did the backlash. Critics blasted her for flaunting a luxe lifestyle online while Russia battled poverty and pandemic chaos.
Almost overnight, she vanished from Russian social platforms. Proekt was shut down, its reporters labeled “foreign agents,” and its founder forced to flee the country.
Rudnova left Russia as Elizaveta Krivonogikh around the time of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, before re-emerging in Paris under her current surname.
She graduated from the prestigious ICART School of Cultural and Art Management and now works at two Parisian galleries — both ironically known for hosting anti-war and dissident exhibitions.
When confronted by the reporter this week, Rudnova — escorted by a professional bodyguard — remained calm.
“I’m really sorry that this is happening. Unfortunately, I’m not responsible for this situation. I’m glad you had the courage to come up to me and talk. Have a good evening,” she said.
German outlet Bild previously claimed to have seen her private channel on messaging app Telegram, reporting in August how Rudnova wrote about “the man who took millions of lives and destroyed mine”.
“It’s liberating to be able to show my face to the world again,” she wrote in The Telegram chat, dubbed “Art of Luiza,” Bild reported.
“It reminds me of who I am and who destroyed my life,” she added in a not-so-subtle dig at Putin.
Mother Svetlana Krivonogikh now lives in a $4.1 million apartment in Monaco, and travels in a yacht which receives a naval escort when arriving in St. Petersburg.
She also has a stake in one of the largest private banks in Russia, and owns a raunchy St Petersburg nightclub, Leningrad Centre, known for its erotic shows, according to reports.
“Putin isn’t interested in putting any daughter of his in power because Russia does not traditionally value female leadership. But he will make sure they’re well taken care of so they’re not tempted to speak out against him. I’m also sure he monitors what they have to say,” O’Neill said.
Ivan Putin and Vladimir Putin Jr.
Putin and his longtime rumored current partner Alina Kabaeva, have two young sons and possibly twin daughters.
Putin and Kabaeva, 41, have been linked since at least 2008, although they both publicly deny any relationship.
Ivan, 9, and Vladimir Jr., 5, live most of the year inside Putin’s palatial Lake Valdai residence northwest of Moscow, according to a report from the Dossier Center, a Russian investigative news organization.
“They live in residences guarded by the FSO (Russia’s elite security service),” the report said.
The boys are reportedly taught only by “hired governesses, do not attend school, do not mix with other children, and travel only by private plane, yachts and armored trains. Their daily activities — from sports to playtime — occur under constant surveillance.
“Their dates of birth are only known by their immediate family,” it continued.
They are unlikely to know anything about the near three-year war in Ukraine, O’Neil claims.
“By the time they’re old enough to learn, they’ll probably want to be loyal to their father. Maybe [one day] they’ll realize how awful it all was – but how awful to realise your father is a truly evil man,” O’Neill told The Post.
However, O”Neill speculates that its unlikely Putin’s children would see him as anything other than a cold or distant person – at best, even behind closed doors.
The Valdai home is reportedly protected by state-of-the-art air defense systems to fend off Ukrainian drones and missiles.
“Like Vladimir Putin, his sons have their own mugs and drink only from them,” while security officials “are always close to the children”, the Dossier Center report, compiled with the help of a member of staff at the Valdai residence, said.
The children rarely see Putin, but he “treats his sons even more reverently than he once did his daughters”, according to Dossier.
It also claims Putin is “the only one who can speak sternly to them.”
Putin has never publicly acknowledged the boys. However, in August this year, he told schoolchildren in Siberia that, “Members of my family, the little ones, speak Chinese.”
They are also believed to be learning English and German.
Sources say Putin and Kabaeva also share 10-year-old twin daughters, who were born near Lugano, Switzerland, in February 2015. But their existence has never been publicly verified.
Ivan, also born in Lugano in 2015, is also an avid hockey player. He is supposedly obsessed with Disney cartoons and movies — going so far as to dress up in costumes — much to the dismay of the Russian president, the Dossier Center claimed.
O’Neill doesn’t believe from his research that Putin is a typical doting dad behind closed doors.
“He might be the type of guy who plays with the kids once in a while and hopes they do great in their weightlifting contest or soccer game,” he said.
“But I have trouble believing he’d be a genuine, warm human being. There’s nothing in his background to suggest that.”
He also said he expects him to raise his sons to “be ruthless” and “tremendously loyal” to himself and Russia.
The post Special mugs to avoid poison and growing up in an isolated fortress: The hidden lives of Vladimir Putin’s secret children appeared first on New York Post.
