Putin’s ex-wife reportedly remarries a man 21 years her junior

Lyudmila Putina, the ex-wife of President Vladimir Putin, is no longer named Putina, according to a report published on the website Sobesednik.ru, based on property records. The story appeared on January 19, but went largely unnoticed by the press. Today, January 25, anti-corruption activist Georgy Alburov confirmed that official documents seem to prove that Lyudmila has remarried and taken her new husband’s surname, Ocheretnaya.

The property records in question concern an apartment in St. Peterburg that the Putins first acquired in 1995. In 1997, the home was transferred to Putin’s then mother-in-law. When she died in 2015, the apartment went to Olga Tsomayeva, Lyudmila’s sister. In September 2015, the apartment was finally sold to someone named Lyudmila Ocheretnaya—a woman with the same first name, patronymic, birthdate, and place of birth as Vladimir Putin’s ex-wife. 

According to Sobesednik.ru, the president’s now 58-year-old ex-wife married 37-year-old Artur Ocheretnyi, who manages a publishing house and serves as the head of an organization called the Center for Development of Interpersonal Communications. According to Sobesednik.ru, Ocheretnyi previously worked for the firm Art Show Center, which helped organize events for the Putin-loyal political party United Russia, the Putin-inspired political movement All-Russia People’s Front, Gazprom, and others.

The Putins revealed their divorce to the public in June 2013, after attending a ballet together in Moscow. Putin described the split as amicable and “civilized.” Before the announcement, there was wide speculation in the Russian press about Lyudmila’s absence from official events where the president’s spouse would normally have attended—including rumors that she’d joined a convent. 

Vladimir Putin has repeatedly told the media that he refuses to discuss the lives of his family members, citing privacy and personal safety concerns.