Vladimir Putin's daughter is dating a new man and his name is sure to leave the Russian President red-faced. Katerina Tikhonova, 35, is the youngest of Putin's two daughters from his marriage to former wife Lyudmila Putina.
Thought to have once been a high-kicking acrobatic rock’n’roll dancer, Tikhonova is reportedly now the deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems at Moscow State University.She was previously married to Kirill Shamalov, Russia's youngest billionaire aged just 40, but the pair split in 2017.
Around that time, she started dating a leading professional ballet dancer and director by the name of Igor Zelensky. Embarrassingly for Putin, the 52-year-old potential son-in-law shares his surname with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (or Zelensky), his bitter rival since Russia launched its "special military operation" in Ukraine back in February.The fact that Tikhonova and dancer Zelensky were dating was revealed after an investigation by Russian independent news outlet IStories and Germany’s Der Spiegel.It has also been revealed that the pair share a two-year-old daughter.
The Ukraine invasion and subsequent western sanctions against Russian nationals have actually stopped Tikhonova from visiting her partner in Munich.
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