Who Is Alina Kabaeva, Putin’s Alleged Partner?

Putin himself is divorced. He was married to Lyudmila Skrebneva, an airline hostess, for decades. Their divorce came five years after his affair with Kabaeva was alleged to have begun, in 2013. Putin is famously secretive about his personal life, so many of the details circulating about the Kabaeva affair are based on hints and speculations. However, as Fortune lays out, it seems fairly certain that Kabaeva bore twins, probably fathered by Putin, in Lugano, Switzerland in 2015. She may have two more children beyond the twins; if that’s true, they are likely also Putin’s children. All four children are rumored to hold Swiss citizenship.

Putin has two other daughters from his first marriage, as Insider reports. One of them, Katerina, makes the occasional appearance on Russian state media as a biotechnology expert; anchors and hosts are careful not to mention her family connections. The New York Post reports that she was last seen in public in 2018, defending her PhD thesis about training preschool-aged children in gymnastics. The last confirmation of Kabaeva’s whereabouts was early in 2022, shortly before the Ukraine War broke out. The Daily Mail saw footage of her dancing at a rhythmic gymnastics tournament in Moscow, miles and miles from the Alps.