Almost nothing is known about the former wife of President Putin, Lyudmila. Not where she lives, not how she earns a living. After her divorce from Putin, Lyudmila married a second time, and the dictator himself generously presented his ex-wife with gifts, so to speak, repaid in full for 30 years of marriage, in which the ex-first lady had suffered a lot.
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Why Lyudmila was so unhappy in this marriage was told in a new film on the YouTube channel of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
A little background
Vladimir and Lyudmila got married in 1983. She met Putin in Leningrad at the concert of Arkady Raikin. They were brought together by mutual friends, inviting them on a double date. Before the wedding, they dated for several years. Lyudmila said that the boyfriend behaved quite coldly, was constantly late for meetings and was always unhappy. But Lyudmila still decided to marry him. On July 28, 1983, they signed at the Wedding Palace on Pyotr Lavrov Street, and the wedding was celebrated on the Neva river tram.
After that, the couple left for Dresden, where Putin worked as a KGB resident. Lyudmila was sitting at home completely alone in an unfamiliar country and with her newborn daughter Maria in her arms, and then the youngest Katya was born.
Vladimir Putin with his daughter and wife Lyudmila / Photo: Getty Images
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You can learn about how Lyudmila Putina really lived then from her letters, which she wrote by hand and faxed to her German friend.
There were a lot of interesting things in these letters, some passages later ended up in a book written by this German friend of Putina. In these letters, Lyudmila frankly said that she was unhappy, and all the time complained to her friend that she was literally “an empty place.”
—-photo: Youtube
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That Putin comes home at night with friends, and she has to serve them food and drinks. She talked about what she wants to do something interesting, find a hobby, she talks about it with her husband, but he does not show interest in this. And when Lyudmila was about to go to visit her friend in Germany, Putin said that “a monument should be erected to her friend, because she agreed to spend time with his wife.”
—-photo: Youtube
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It wasn’t all bad
However, despite Putina’s “torturous life”, from the outside it might well seem that she lives well. Twice a year with her children, Lyudmila went to France and Switzerland on vacation and, wherever she went, she spent crazy money on clothes and cosmetics in boutiques and did not see any problem in this. And when Putin was offered the position of Yeltsin’s deputy press secretary in 1996, his wife told him to refuse, since no additional income was possible in such a position. At the same time, Putina wrote to her friend all the time that while her husband worked in the KGB, her life was a nightmare. This was Lyudmila’s last letter to her friend, which she wrote while on vacation in the south of France. After that, they called up several more times, and then their communication was interrupted due to security reasons.
—-Lyudmila Putina / Photo: Getty Images
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In a word, life in marriage for Putin was “a real nightmare,” as she herself called this union. On June 6, 2013, Vladimir and Lyudmila Putin, jointly giving an interview during the intermission of the premiere of the Esmeralda ballet in the Kremlin, publicly announced that their marriage was actually completed by mutual decision.
After a divorce from his wife, Putin began to prepare for her the most dowry. Back in 2014, immediately after the divorce, he publicly stated during the Direct Line with the Russians that he now had no time for his personal life, but his ex-wife should be married off. And he gave it out. In 2015, the 57-year-old Lyudmila Putina got married for the then 37-year-old athlete Artur Ocheretny, took her husband’s surname and began a new life. It is Lyudmila’s new husband who now manages the Center for the Development of the Russian Language foundation, created back in the 2000s especially for Lyudmila. The ex-First Lady herself has finally ceased to feel like a “living decoration” that she used to be under Putin.
—-Lyudmila Putina and Vladimir Putin / Photo: Getty Images
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Recall that we previously wrote about what Lyudmila Putina wore when she was the first lady of Russia.
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