Lyudmila Putina

Early life and education

Lyudmila was born in Kaliningrad, Soviet Union, the daughter of Alexander (his patronym is reported variously as either Abramovich or Avramovich) Shkrebnev (Александр Абрамович Шкребнев or Александр Аврамович Шкребнев) and Catherine Tikhonovna Shkrebneva (Екатерина Тихоновна Шкребнева). Her father worked at Kaliningrad Mechanical Plant.

She was educated as a linguist. In 1986, Lyudmila graduated from the branch of Spanish language and philology of the Department of Philology of Leningrad State University.

Early adult life and marriage

In her early adult years Lyudmila was a flight attendant for the Kaliningrad branch of Aeroflot. She met Vladimir Putin in Leningrad, and they married on 28 July 1983. The couple had two daughters, Mariya (born April 28, 1985, Leningrad, Soviet Union) and Yekaterina (Katja) (born August 31, 1986, in Dresden, East Germany).

From 1990 to 1994 Lyudmila taught German at the Department of Philology of Leningrad State University. For a few years prior to Vladimir's appointment as Prime Minister of Russia in 1999, she was a Moscow representative of the company Telecominvest.

During this time the children attended the German School in Moscow (Deutsche Schule Moskau).

First Lady

After Vladimir's rise to political power, Lyudmila maintained a low profile on the Russian political stage, generally avoiding the limelight except as required by protocol and restricting her public role to supportive statements about her husband. The children were withdrawn from the German School; their photographs have not been published by the Russian media, and no family portrait has ever been issued.

Role in spelling controversy

As First Lady, Lyudmila Putina was a curator of a fund that aimed to develop the Russian language and sometimes produced statements concerning Russian language and education. Her preference for "maintaining and preserving" the Russian language led her to make public statements against orthographic reform. The Russian Academy of Science sponsored a commission to study the orthography of the Russian language and propose changes. Their recommendations were made public in 2002 after eight years of work, but were subsequently shot down by Putina, who used Russia's burgeoning economy as one of her reasons why the orthographic reform was not just unnecessary but untimely. However, although one newspaper in Moscow alleged that "Lyudmila Putina de facto cancelled any attempts to reform spelling," the fact remains that public and academic reaction to the reforms was sufficiently negative to have that particular reform attempt abandoned.

Divorce

On 6 June 2013, Lyudmila Putina and her husband publicly announced termination of their marriage based on a mutual decision. The divorce announcement was made on camera for Russian news media at the State Kremlin Palace during the intermission of a performance by Kremlin Ballet, ending years of speculation about their relationship. In April 2014, the Kremlin confirmed that their divorce had been finalized.

In January 2016 Lyudmila was reported to have married a man called Artur Ocheretny in early 2015.

Controversies

According to Reuters, Lyudmila Putina controls the Centre for the Development of Inter-personal Communications. CDIC 's offices are located in the center of Moscow, on Vozdvizhenka Street in the building previously known as Volkonsky House, which is its own property. The building, important Leo Tolstoy's address, was listed in Russian cultural heritage register but was completely rebuilt in 2013 raised its height from two stories to four, despite numerous objections and protests by Moscow citizens including an unanswered appeal to Vladimir Putin signed by 200 famous science and cultural persons of the city.

The building mainly occupied by commercial tenants, including VTB Bank, Sberbank, a construction company called Severstroygroup, a sushi restaurant and a Burger King. Total rent from the building is about $3-$4 million.

Tenants pay their rent to a company known as Meridian, which is in turn owned by a company known as Intererservis, which is wholly owned by Lyudmila Alexandrovna Shkrebnyova, which is Putina's maiden name. Putina's sister, Olga Alexandrovna Tsomayeva, was previously General Director of Intererservis. Artur Ocheretny, Putina's current husband, chairs the CDIC's management board.