Vladimir Putin and the Russian elite denounce the West and the lack of patriotism of the Russians who choose to live there, but even the children of the elite - including Putin's daughter - have chosen the comfort of living in the Western states, according to the Russian independent media. Another topic is that of the Western politicians who chose Russia and the generosity with which it rewarded them.
ISTORIES: Vladimir Putin’s daughter from Munich
The president of Russia calls those who turn to the West ‘traitors’ to their homeland. If this is so, he should include in the list of traitors his own daughter, who in recent years has lived with her partner Igor Zelensky in two countries - Russia and Germany.
On December 9, 2019, the charter flight from Munich landed at the VIP terminal of Vnukovo Airport with several special passengers on board. Three undercover agents with the Russian President's Security Service, a piano teacher, two nannies, a well-known ballet artist and his companion - a former acrobatic rock-and-roll dancer, and their two-year-old daughter stepped off the plane.
For two years, from 2017 to 2019, she had to travel from Munich to Moscow and back dozens of times. She was living in Russia at the time, while her child's father was in Germany, where he headed the Bavarian State Ballet. He is Igor Zelensky. She is Katerina Tikhonova, Vladimir Putin's youngest daughter, according to an investigation by ISTORIES and Der Spiegel. […]
Igor Zelensky is 52 years old. He is one of the most successful and well-known Russian ballet artists. He was the principal dancer of the Mariinsky Theater, where he had all the lead roles. He then became a first soloist of the New York City Ballet, and a guest soloist of the Royal Ballet of Great Britain, La Scala, the Bolshoi Theater and other world stages. […]
In 2016, Zelensky became the artistic director of the Bavarian State Ballet in Munich. Before taking the post, he had publicly told a press conference that he hoped for a peaceful solution to the Crimean crisis: “I am not a politician, but they must sit at the same table and calm down. Art will save the world”.
In the world of ballet, it was rumored that the artistic director was harsh and had the reputation of a “bad boy”. In 2016, Komersant ballet critic Tatiana Kuznetsova wrote that according to “unverified information”, Zelensky was benefiting from strong high-level support. A year later, she herself predicted the role of artistic director of the Bolshoi Theater, stressing again that Zelensky had very influential patrons.
Since 2018, Igor Zelensky has been a member of the Board of Observers of the National Cultural Heritage Fund, which is responsible for building cultural and educational complexes in Russia's regions. The first constructions were to appear in Kaliningrad, Vladivostok, Sevastopol and Kemerovo. This project was initiated by Vladimir Putin himself.
The money for the project, 120 billion rubles, was allocated by Rosneftegaz. Vladimir Putin called this company the “oil piggy bank”, where Russia's oil and gas revenues were accumulating. According to the BBC and Medusa, these huge resources were to be managed by companies close to the President of Russia - Gennady Timchenko and Arkady Rotenberg.
Due to the pandemic, hundreds of employees of the fund were fired so they wrote complaints to Putin, the prime minister and other officials. So far, no cultural-educational complex has been completed. […]
In 2021, Igor Zelensky described for Suddeutsche Zeitung his weekly routine: on Mondays, like many other inhabitants of Munich, he likes to jog through the English Garden, on Tuesday he prefers Italian cuisine, and on Thursdays he buys fresh produce from the local market to cook for the family. Saturday is also a day for the family: “We sleep longer, then we go to Tegernsee. The Bavarian foothills of the Alps are beautiful”.
These idyllic descriptions of bourgeois life in the West couldn’t be to the liking of Zelensky's daughter's grandfather, Vladimir Putin, who in mid-March, in the third week of the war he started in Ukraine, called ‘traitors’ the Russian who had had left for the West. “I do not blame those who have villas in Miami or the French Riviera, those who cannot live without fois-gras, seafood or the so-called gender freedoms. But the problem is not this, the problem is that many of them feel they belong there, not here, in Russia, with our people”, Putin said.
Zelensky’s contract with the Bavarian Ballet was due to expire in 2026, but in April he announced his decision to leave the theater for personal reasons.
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INSIDER: Children of Russian dignitaries sanctioned for the war in Ukraine keep living and enjoying leisure time in the West
New names of officials, politicians and representatives of law enforcement agencies are being added to the list of the sanctioned. However, they register their assets in the name of relatives who continue to enjoy life in NATO countries. INSIDER comes with some examples in which the relatives and friends of those guilty of starting the war in Ukraine continue to live and get entertained in the West, where they have businesses and own real estate.
“Many of these people, basically, feel they belong there, not here, in Russia, with our people. In their view, this means that they belong to the upper caste, the superior race”, Putin said of the “fifth column”, although he seemed to be talking about the families of his closest associates. All of Putin's pseudo-patriotic statements and his tendency to induce hatred of his opponents bear no weight if we look at the comfort enjoyed by Putin’s closest elite in the West thanks to the money they’ve stolen.
Sergei Lisovsky - an Edinaia Rosia deputy and one of the main suspects in the murder of journalist Vladislav Listiev, openly supported the invasion of Ukraine and voted for the recognition of DNR and LNR. At the same time, he is not at all bothered by the fact that his children hold the citizenship of a NATO state.
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Alexei Cepa - Member of the State Duma from Spravedlivaia Rosia, who constantly criticizes the West and is a member of the special parliamentary committee for investigating foreign interference in Russia's internal affairs. Just like his party colleagues, he supported the invasion of Ukraine, although he blamed the West for the war, saying that “America needs this war to divide the fraternal peoples”. Cepa's children, however, are residents of NATO member states. Thus, INSIDER found out that Cepa's son has assets in Spain. Daniil Cepa, 25, runs the company Leniz Inversiones, with a capital of 2.9 million euros, which deals in real estate. He owns a villa in Marbella. According to cadastral data from Spain, the villa belongs to BETREN INVERSIONES Ltd., the old name of the company headed by Cepa's son, Leniz Inversiones.
While the patriotic MP's son owns a business and a villa in Spain, his daughter - Anastasia - is one of the beneficiaries of the British company Aperse Ltd., which sells “luxury clothes and accessories”. It can be seen in the British Trade Register that the daughter has English residency. Alexei Cepa is included in the EU and UK sanctions list, but his children are not. He is currently involved in the information war with Europe. He “predicts” the collapse of the EU, pleads for the annexation of the Ukrainian region of Kherson to Russia and accuses NATO of Russophobia.
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Relatives and children of members of the Federation Council can boast the same condition. Senator Alexei Pushkov's daughter, Daria Pushkova, lives in Italy. She is the director of the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Rome.
The daughter of another member of the Federation Council, Veaceslav Timchenko, owns a house in the Czech Republic. Earlier, INSIDER wrote that this senator was hiding his luxury real estate in Russia from his income and tax returns statements.
The son of the speaker of the Upper House Valentina Matvienko owns a villa in Italy. Moreover, according to INSIDER, he is listed in the Russian database with a residence visa in Italy.
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A classic case of anti-Western hypocrisy is that of Russian MFA chief Sergei Lavrov. His stepdaughter, Polina Kovaleva, owns an apartment in London which cost £ 4.4 million. The husband of Lavrov's daughter Ekaterina, Alexander Vinokurov, received Israeli citizenship. The father of the MFA chief's son-in-law, Semion Vinokurov, has an apartment in Geneva.
Prime Minister Mishustin's sons studied in Switzerland at the Le Rosey Institute. The tuition fee at this institution exceeds 100 thousand dollars per year.
The son of Deputy Prime Minister Marat Husnullin, according to INSIDER data, flies to Geneva for leisure. The 26-year-old Albert Husnullin’s favorite destinations include Dubai, Ibiza, Cyprus, Greece, Nice and Stockholm. A lot of assets are registered in his name in Tatarstan. The government official’s sun grows wheat and produces dairy products. In general, it has only to gain from the rising prices of late.
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov's stepdaughter studied in the United Kingdom at Kingston University. Daria Belousova's stepfather, the chief curator of the government's VTB bank, arranged for her to work at the state bank with a salary of 1.3 million rubles per month.
The daughter of Justice Minister Constantine Chuceinko also studied in London. She holds a degree from the British University of Goldsmiths.
Alina Novak, the daughter of Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Novak, lived in Spain. She studied at the ESADE Private Business School in Barcelona.
GRANIRU: Dancing (with Russia) begins to cost
MEPs call for the sanctioning of the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, chairman of Rosnefti's Board of Directors.
Another figure targeted by the resolution is the former head of Austrian diplomacy Karin Kneissl, a member of the Rosnefti Board of Directors, whose wedding, in 2018, was attended by the very Kremlin Fuhrer. In fact, this wedding is the best proof of Putin's “anti-fascist” urges, obsessed with the “denazification” of Ukraine. Kneissl, formally, is a politician with no party, but came to power on the lists of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party, which appeared on the political scene, paradoxically, precisely because other parties did not want to receive former members of NSDAP.
One can talk on TV about the members of the Azov group, about the Nazi Zelenskyi and Hitler the Jew, while at the same time dancing at the wedding of the representative of the party whose leader was a member of NSDAP and a brigadefuhrer. And then also provide them with a warm place and a nice piece of bread.
Schroder, of course, has a more decent biography. Used to, actually. But we are now wondering if this man, who, as proven by his latest interview, knows the politics and ambitions of his Kremlin friend very well, understands that he is in fact becoming an accomplice in this war. Schroder hasn’t supported Putin just for the show. He has been actively lobbying Gazprom's interests all these years. And the main purpose of these interests has been to strengthen Germany's dependence on Russia. […]
In any case, the possible inclusion of the former federal chancellor in the sanctions list would be unprecedented and would demonstrate how fast the world is changing after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Schroder is not a Russian official or oligarch, he is not Lavrov or Abramovich. He is part of the political elite who did not bother to talk about the values of the civilized world while serving Putin. […]
