The talented young woman in this eighties-fabulous partner dance competition video is said to be Vladimir Putin's daughter.
She is reportedly involved in a new, $1.6 billion science and technology incubator funded by some of her dad's friends.
Vladimir Putin.
Russian executives close to Vladimir Putin are backing an ambitious startup incubator and science center next to Moscow State University that may prove lucrative.
Given the nature of Russian business under Putin, that's not a huge surprise. The twist in the story, first reported by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov's newspaper RBC Daily, is that the young woman running two entities involved in developing the $1.6 billion project, Katerina Tikhonova, is Putin's youngest child, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Neither of Putin's daughters, Katerina, 28, or Maria, a year older, has ever given a media interview and the Kremlin has never released photographs of them as adults. Snippets and rumors have bounced around the Internet. One of the few things Putin, 62, has ever said about Katerina is that she was named after her maternal grandmother, Ekaterina Tikhonovna Shkrebneva.
And how was she outed? Reuters reports, for those who don't read Russian:
[O]pposition blogger Alexei Navalny on Thursday published on his Facebook page an online report which identified a certain Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova as the head of an organization working with Moscow State University.
A separate report on Wednesday by RBC, an independent multi-media holding, stated Tikhonova was among those heading a $1.7 billion project to build new University facilities but it did not make any connection between her and Putin.
Navalny wrote on his Facebook page: "RBC (they are cool!) yesterday found Putin's daughter in the Scientific Council of Moscow State University."
A source close to Moscow State University confirmed Tikhonova was Putin's daughter, telling Reuters on condition of anonymity: "Yes, it is her."
"Putin's Dancing Daughter Said to Run Fund Backed by Dad's Allies" [bloomberg]
"Opposition blogger may have "outed" Putin's daughter" [Reuters]
