Vladimir Putin’s secret grandson has been given a new name after an ironic twist put him a little too close to the Russian dictator’s arch-enemy.
Leaked records reveal that Putin’s closely guarded family added a new member in August 2025, when his daughter Katerina Tikhonova, 40, gave birth to a son, Adrian, according to the independent Russian investigative news outlet Agentstvo.
Katerina Tikhonova oversees key Russian AI projects and is linked to drone production, an industry that has become a crucial component of her father’s war on Ukraine.
EVGENIA NOVOZHENINA/REUTERS
The arrival came with one rather inconvenient wrinkle for the 74-year-old despot: by convention, his grandson’s last name would be none other than “Zelensky.”
Adrian’s father is ballet dancer Igor Zelensky, 57, who headed the Bavarian State Ballet in Germany until his father-in-law launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Although Igor Zelensky and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are not related, it appears to be an association Putin was unwilling to entertain after years of unsuccessfully trying to topple the democratically elected Ukrainian leader.
Zelensky has become the face of Ukraine’s resistance to Putin’s attempt to bring the country under Moscow’s control.
Cornelius Poppe/via REUTERS
According to leaked civil registry records, Putin’s grandson has been registered as Adrian Tikhonov, taking the masculine form of his mother Katerina’s surname rather than his father’s.
Adrian’s birth certificate was issued by Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital, known as the “Kremlin Clinic.”
It took unusually long—11 months—after Adrian’s birth for him to be registered.
Katerina Tikhonova, the younger of Putin’s two acknowledged daughters, is a former acrobatic dancer who now oversees key Russian AI projects and is linked to drone production, an industry that has become a crucial component of her father’s war on Ukraine.
Adrian is Tikhonova’s second child with Igor Zelensky. The couple had their firstborn daughter Elsa in 2017.
At birth, Elsa was given her father’s surname, using the feminine form “Zelenskaya.” But she is now believed to have dropped the inconvenient name in favor of her mother’s Tikhonova, according to the Daily Mail.
Former Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva is allegedly Vladimir Putin’s longtime lover and the mother of two of his children.
REUTERS/ITAR-TASS/PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE / Reuters
Tikhonova’s older sister Maria Vorontsova, 41, is Putin’s first daughter from his marriage to ex-wife Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, 68. Vorontsova has two children, ages 14 and 9.
Putin’s rumored longtime lover Alina Kabaeva, 43, is only a few years older than both of his daughters. She reportedly has four children with the dictator, including two sons called Ivan and Vladimir.
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