The husband and ex-husband of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eldest daughter have evaded U.S. sanctions on the president’s family because the marriages were never officially registered, the independent Meduza news website and U.S.-funded Current Time outlet reported Friday.
The United States on Wednesday sanctioned Katerina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova, widely believed to be Putin’s daughters, as part of its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While Tikhonova’s ex-husband Kirill Shamalov was also hit by the sanctions, the husband and ex-husband of Vorontsova, Putin’s eldest daughter, were not.
Meduza and Current Time for the first time identified Vorontsova’s current husband as Yevgeny Nagorny, a manager from Moscow.
According to the outlets, Nagorny purchased a luxury, 258-square-meter apartment in central Moscow's luxury Barkli Gallery condominium complex worth an estimated $27 million in 2020.
Citing a leaked database of food delivery service Yandex Eda, the outlets found that orders delivered to this apartment were made under the name of Yuri — the Russian name used by Vorontsova's first husband, Dutch businessman Jorrit Faassen.
A Federal Security Service (FSB) employee whose contact was listed as "Maria's assistant" and "Masha's aide" had also ordered food to this address, the outlets said.
Nagorny had held opposition views in the past, the outlets reported, publishing clips and cartoons on social media that criticized the police and Putin.
In 2016, Nagorny stopped posting to social media. That same year, Nagorny and Vorontsova started traveling by airplane together, Meduza and Current Time reported, citing air travel databases. The couple reportedly had a child, who was given his father's last name, and they began traveling in threes, the outlets reported.
Around that time, Vorontsova began signing her name as Maria Nagornaya. Nagorny got a job at natural gas giant Novatek, a company associated with Putin's friend, billionaire Gennady Timchenko, Meduza and Current Time reported. Nagorny was reportedly in charge of equipment procurement, and his monthly salary in 2018 was 760,000 rubles ($9,500).
Faassen, meanwhile, is "afraid" to return to the Netherlands given the fallout between Russia and the West over the Ukraine invasion, the outlets cited a source as saying. The source added it's "unlikely" he will be able to do business in Europe in the foreseeable future.
Faassen and Vorontsova did not respond to Meduza's and Current Time's questions; they read the Telegram messages and blocked the senders.
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