Putin’s adult daughters, 36-year-old Mariya Putina and 35-year-old Katerina Tikhonova, were named in the latest sanctions, along with Russian government officials and family members on Wednesday.
By targeting Putin’s daughters, the United States hopes to freeze the assets that the Russian president may be hiding with them abroad.  Although it is unclear what assets they might own, a U.S. government official told CNN that the practice was common among the Russian elite.
But little is known about Putin’s daughters, about whom he rarely speaks.
In fact, their identities have never been confirmed by Putin or the Kremlin, and their existence has sparked much speculation among the Russian and international community.  Here’s what we know:


FAMILY BACKGROUND 
Officially, Putin has two children, Maria and Katerina, from Putin’s marriage to Lyudmila Putina, a former Aeroflot flight attendant with whom he divorced in 2013.
In 2015, Putin, who has rarely spoken publicly about his daughters, shared some knowledge about their lives, while ruling out speculation that they had left the country.
Although he never disclosed their names or job titles, citing security concerns, he said they had stayed away from business and politics at the time.
“They live in Russia … They have never been educated anywhere except Russia.  I am proud of them, they continue to study and work.  “My daughters speak three European languages ​​fluently,” he said at the annual press conference.
They were never “star” children, they were never happy with the spotlight on them.  “They just live their own lives.”
According to Reuters, Maria was born in Leningrad, Russia in 1985 and Katerina was born in Germany in 1986 during her father’s time in the KGB.  Katerina uses the surname of Tikhonova’s grandmother.  Mariya has also been identified using the surname Vorontsova.
Tikhonova and Putina have never publicly confirmed that the Russian leader is their father.  However, several studies have linked women to their father.


KATERINA TICHONOVA 
Tikhonova studied at St. Petersburg State University and Moscow State University and has a master’s degree in physics and mathematics.  Today, he is described as a “technology executive whose work supports GoR [Russian government] and the defense industry, “according to the US Government.
In 2014, together with her dancing partner, they took fifth place in the world acrobatic rock’n’roll dance championship.
Because Tikhonova and her sister were never identified in photos with their father, they were actually footage from the competition compared to photos from the Moscow State University website that first helped confirm her identity in 2015.
Tikhonova married Kirill Shamalov, the youngest son of Nikolai Shamalov, a close confidant of Putin and co-owner of Rossiya Bank, which the United States has described as “the personal bank” of senior Kremlin officials.
In 2015, Reuters estimated that Kirill and Tikhonova would have joint ventures worth about $ 2 billion, including a beachfront villa in Biarritz, France, which is estimated to be worth about $ 3.7 million.
Tikhonova worked in various roles at Moscow State University and, in 2020, was appointed head of a new institute of artificial intelligence and intelligent systems at the university.


MARIA PUTINA 
Little is known about Putin’s eldest daughter, a pediatric endocrinologist, who is said to be studying the effects of hormones on the body.  According to the US government, Putin “leads state-funded programs that have received billions of dollars from the Kremlin for genetic research and are personally supervised by Putin.”
Putin studied biology at St. Petersburg State University and medicine at Moscow State University.  According to Reuters, he wrote a book on idiopathic retardation in children in 2015.
Putina married Dutch businessman Jorrit Faassen in 2013 and is also known by her married name.