THE LEVEL OF ABSURDITY IS HARD TO DESCRIBE.
While Vladimir Putin was waging his bloody war against Ukraine, the young woman identified by multiple investigations as his daughter was studying and living in Paris β enjoying the very Europe her fatherβs regime spends its days threatening and denouncing.
Her name is Elizaveta Krivonogikh, also known as Luiza Rozova. She was born in 2003 to Svetlana Krivonogikh, a woman whom investigative outlet Proekt identified as having had a relationship with Putin.
But in Paris, Elizaveta had another identity: Elizaveta Olegovna Rudnova.
And that surname is remarkable.
Oleg Rudnov was a longtime friend of Putin and a St. Petersburg media executive who died in 2015. Investigative journalists have documented Rudnovβs role in property arrangements connected to Putinβs circle.
Under the name Elizaveta Rudnova, she studied at ICART, a private school of arts and cultural management in Paris, from 2020 to 2024.
TSN obtained school documents containing her personal information. People at the school recognized her from photographs. Independent Russian outlet Agentstvo then found another striking connection: airline tickets purchased in 2021 for βElizaveta Olegovna Rudnovaβ carried the same date of birth as Krivonogikh, and the bookings used the same phone number previously associated with her.
In other words, while Putinβs regime was presenting the West as Russiaβs enemy and Russian troops were destroying Ukrainian cities, his daughter was building a life in Paris under the surname of her fatherβs deceased friend.
The contrast is extraordinary.
Ordinary Russians were told that Europe was decadent, hostile and dangerous. Russian soldiers were sent to kill and die in Ukraine in the name of Putinβs geopolitical ambitions.
Meanwhile, his own family lived by very different rules.
Paris. European education. Galleries. Nightlife. Freedom of movement. A different surname.
This is perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of the enormous gap between the ideology sold to ordinary Russians and the lives enjoyed by people inside the ruling elite.
The West is apparently an existential enemy β just not when your own children want to study and live there.
Patriotism for the masses.
Paris for the family.