Katerina Tikhonova, Vladimir Putin’s daughter, has been living in secret with ‘Zelensky’

*Paromita Das

According to reports, Vladimir Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova has a lover named Zelensky, the same name as Ukraine’s president.

Sanctions imposed on the 35-year-old for her father’s invasion of Ukraine have halted her regular flights from Moscow to Munich, where she would be accompanied by Russian secret service guards.

Igor Zelensky, 52, a leading professional ballet dancer and top director who recently led the Bavarian State Ballet, is her new partner, with whom she has a two-year-old daughter.

The information comes from an investigation conducted by the Russian independent news outlet IStories and the German magazine Der Spiegel.
Katerina Tikhonova, one of Putin’s two daughters from his marriage to ex-Kremlin first lady Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Ocheretnaya, was previously married to Russia’s youngest billionaire, Kirill Shamalov, 40.

They divorced around 2017 when she began dating the ballet star, who was previously married and has two daughters and a son with choreographer Yana Serebryakova.

Putin has railed against Russians who live in the West, despite his own daughter traveling to Munich on a regular basis with full state support and security to spend time with her boyfriend. She appears to have been living with him in Germany until earlier this year, during the conflict in Ukraine.
‘For two years, from 2017 to 2019, the little girl’s mother had to fly this route — from Moscow to Munich and back — dozens of times,’ according to the Stories report.

‘She lived in Russia, and her daughter’s father was the director of the Bavarian State Ballet in Germany.’ Igor Zelensky is his name.’

Documents proving flights involving ‘Tikhonova, Zelensky, a child, nannies, security guards’ were discovered during the journalistic investigation. It was revealed that’she flew to Munich, where Zelensky worked, more than 50 times over a two-year period.’

The outlet obtained ‘documents from the e-mail of the Security Service of the President and Tikhonova’s personal security guard Alexei Skripchak’ from an anonymous source.
‘Passports of Putin’s daughter, Zelensky, and a girl born in 2017 are among Skripchak’s documents. Tikhonova’s security guard purchased all of their tickets.

‘We do not reveal the child’s name for ethical reasons; suffice it to say that her patronymic is Igorevna, which corresponds to Zelensky’s name,’ according to the report.

Zelensky, who was born in Russia with Georgian ancestors and is not related to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, resigned from the Bavarian State Ballet last month, reportedly for refusing to condemn Putin’s bloody war in Ukraine.

According to the report, when asked about his former boss, a Der Spiegel source at the Bavarian Ballet responded immediately that Zelensky was’most likely Putin’s daughter’ even before they were asked about his family ties.
‘By the end of 2019, Katerina Tikhonova had apparently grown tired of constantly flying to Munich and decided to live with her partner.’ According to the report.

‘At least, one of the letters in the archive of Putin’s daughter Alexei Skripchak’s guard indicates this.’

Her partner, Zelensky, has been described as one of Russia’s most successful ballet dancers, a star of both the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and the New York City Ballet Company. He performed as a guest soloist with the Royal Ballet in London.

‘There is no doubt that Mr. Zelensky has leadership experience and Western ties,’ wrote Kommersant in 2011.
Prior to his appointment in Munich and his relationship with Putin’s daughter, he commented on the fallout from the Russian strongman’s annexation of Crimea in 2016.

‘I’m not a politician, but they should all sit down at the same table and relax.’ ‘Art will save the world,’ he predicts.

There have long been whispers that he had high-level patrons in Moscow, but this is the first time he has been linked to Putin’s family.

Zelensky described his weekly routine in Sueddeutsche Zeitung in 2021 as follows: on Mondays, like “many Munich residents,” he ran in the English Garden; on Tuesdays he preferred Italian cuisine; and on Thursdays he bought fresh food at the local market to cook with his family.
Saturday was a family day: ‘First we’ll sleep, then we’ll go to Tegernsee.’ ‘The Bavarian Alps foothills are simply stunning,’ he said.

Zelensky was sued by Britain’s Royal Ballet in 2013 after he and his mentee, Sergei Polunin, walked out of a performance.

Polunin is a Ukrainian-born ballet dancer who, at the age of 20, became the Royal Ballet’s youngest ever male principal. He is also well-known for a tattoo of Vladimir Putin’s face on his chest.

Putin lashed out at Russians who enjoyed life in the West in March.

‘I do not condemn those who own a villa in Miami or on the French Riviera and can’t live without foie gras, oysters, or so-called gender freedoms,’ he says.
‘But the problem is not this; the problem is that many of these people, by nature, are there, not here, not with our people, not with Russia.’

The Bavarian State Opera’s managing director, Serge Dorney, told Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus that Zelensky’s departure from his German ballet was due to the war.

Dorney clearly mistook himself for the Ukrainian culture minister.

‘We talked with him [Zelensky] several times, and I forced him to agree that he should leave,’ he explained. ‘This was not his decision to make.

‘We had a conversation with him, and I convinced him of this.’ Tikhonova, who was born while her father was a KGB spy in Germany, is said to be the deputy director of Moscow State University’s Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems.

Her previous footage shows her as a high-kicking acrobatic ‘rock’n’roll’ dancer.

She and her elder sister Maria, Dr Maria Vorontsova, a leading researcher at Russia’s Ministry of Health’s National Medical Research Center for Endocrinology.

Luiza Rozova, 19, is her half-sister and the daughter of Putin’s ex-lover, cleaner-turned-multimillionaire Svetlana Krivonogikh, 45.
With an estimated £74 million financial and property fortune, Krivonogikh is now part-owner of a major Russian bank and one of the country’s wealthiest women.

Zelensky has expressed his affection for London.

‘I have a unique attitude toward London,’ he explained. ‘It was the first city where I went on tour with the theatre when I was 19 years old.’

‘After that, I came here every two years to perform.’ My Swan Lake and Le Corsaire premieres were held here.’