We studied the biographies of 1,329 people holding positions in Russia in all major areas of public administration, from the highest authorities to the largest state-funded museums. As you will read below, we discovered that 76% of them (1,012 people) had relatives either also employed in public administration, or in businesses connected to government agencies, or in public work funded by the budget or political parties (all of which are subordinate to the Kremlin to one degree or another), or display other signs of potential conflicts of interest (for example, working in private companies in the same field as the interests lobbied by a relative who is a government official). We estimate the average number of relatives of each civil servant we studied to be eight, which brings the total amount of biographies studied by us to about 10,000.

The full list of government structures and their employees that we studied is as follows:

In the broadest sense, we investigated the existence of family ties among Russian authorities, attempting to answer the question, “Are they passing the country down through generations?” Family ties here refer to any degree of kinship (blood relatives of any generation, spouses, in-laws). In some cases, the study also covered informal relationships – godparents and godchildren, lovers/mistresses and civil partners, and in particularly rare cases, people from the same geographic area – in all these cases, the basis for inclusion in the database was the proven particular closeness and trust between the individuals involved (in all such cases, we specifically indicate the reason for inclusion).

The grounds for inclusion in the database were:

a) A relative working in any government agency.

b) A relative working in the public sector of the economy in managerial positions.

c) A relative working in the private sector of the economy if there are signs of a conflict of interest (receiving government contracts; the same sphere that the official is involved in lobbying and controlling, etc.).

d) A relative working in a senior position or having a business partnership with large oligarchic structures closely linked to the Russian authorities (e.g., the father of an MP being a business partner of Oleg Deripaska, a top manager of Alisher Usmanov’s company, etc.). In most cases known to us, major players in Russian business are closely linked to the authorities and often corrupt officials by paying salaries and dividends to their relatives. Another sign of a conflict of interest for us was the relatives of a civil servant having a common business with other officials or their families (this often indicates that the person is a nominal owner of the asset in the interests of their power-holding relative).

e) A relative working in a public structure (foundations, NGOs, civic chambers, etc.) that is financed by the state or political parties and is under the explicit or implicit control of the executive branch.

f) A relative working in a managerial position in a budgetary institution accountable to a member of their family (universities, research institutes, museums, medical institutions, etc.).

g) A relative serving in the army or any other law enforcement agency with an officer’s rank.

h) There may also be some special cases, including but not limited to proven favoritism toward a relative of an official when applying to a prestigious university or covering up for a relative of a civil servant who committed a criminal offense. In all such cases, the context of the events is provided in the bios.

As part of the study, we also examined several related issues:

a) Whether the officials in question have experience of service in law enforcement agencies (this also includes obtaining an officer’s rank through training at a military university, service in irregular formations (Cossack troops, DPR/LPR military units, etc.), proven cooperation with special services, possession of an officer’s rank or departmental awards for special, unofficially disclosed services to law enforcement agencies (e.g., for cooperation with the SVR, KGB, etc.).

b) Whether they have experience of working/serving in the Soviet state apparatus in positions of some prominence (leadership of the CPSU and Komsomol, trade unions, large-scale industry, agriculture, etc.)

c) Whether they own real estate and, in some cases, other expensive property, the origin of which can be related to corruption.

d) Connections between the officials and foreign countries, in cases where we have such information (family members studying abroad, foreign citizenship and residence permits, real estate in third countries, repeated tourist trips to countries that are officially recognized as unfriendly by the Russian Federation).

We examined the family ties of civil servants who held their positions as of January 1, 2025. In cases where an official lost their position (and sometimes their life) after that date, we noted this fact separately in their bio.

We included the relatives in our study if a career or financial conflict of interest existed between them and the official at any point in the latter’s career. For example, one of Vladimir Putin’s former sons-in-law, Kirill Shamalov, had a conflict of interest with his high-ranking relative at the time when he was married (in a civil marriage) to the president’s daughter, Katerina Tikhonova. After the divorce, he lost a significant portion of his assets and his position at Putin’s court, but he was nevertheless included in our study, as his career success and wealth were all attributable to his father-in-law’s patronage during the period when the latter held public office.

We also included those relatives whose high position in the state hierarchy of the past probably also guaranteed the success of their descendants in public service. This applies to all bureaucratic dynasties that began in Soviet times or even earlier, in tsarist Russia.

Establishing that a person holds a government position in today’s Russia is not as straightforward as one might think. Fear of sanctions, the traditional secrecy of the Russian authorities, special secrecy orders and other reasons have led to a situation where, in some cases, agencies and companies do not even disclose the names of their leaders. To compile an up-to-date list of people holding various top positions in the public sector, we used the official websites of institutions and organizations, the most recent publicly available phone directories for these structures, public data, and media reports. In some cases, even that was not enough, and we had to resort to more complex methods. For example, to find out the names of the deputy heads of the Presidential Administration (which are not publicly disclosed), we analyzed various regulatory acts (such as orders on awards and incentives) and used publicly available leaked correspondence.

To find relatives of officials, we used a whole range of OSINT methods in addition to open data:

a) we studied people who had lived at the same addresses as the officials for the last 35 years.

b) we analyzed databases that collect information about the shared use of cars, phones, and email addresses.

c) we reviewed leaks about regular joint crossings of the state border, which usually indicates the existence of personal relationships between people.

d) we studied leaks from the civil registar’s office.

To analyze the biographies of officials’ relatives, we searched for information as follows:

a) we established the existence of financial and any other professional relationships with a state employer (using leaks containing tax data, workplaces data, and in some cases, employment record book entries).

b) We studied telephone directories indicating the subscribers’ positions and titles.

c) we used thematic databases compiled by independent researchers before us (rupep.org, dumabingo.org, declarator.org, etc.)

d) we obtained archival extracts when necessary and possible.

e) in some cases, we relied on conversations with colleagues of the officials and other sources.

f) we used official business registers to study the entrepreneurial activities of the study subjects.

g) we studied officials’ public income and property declarations.

First and foremost: We do not claim that there is a conflict of interest in all cases of kinship described in our study. In many cases, we cannot claim that the offspring of an official’s family obtained their position and wealth solely due to their origin or the patronage of one of their parents. In a few isolated cases, we can say with a high degree of certainty that the career of such an offspring was definitely not influenced by their family ties (e.g., a mother who is a top government official and a son who is the head of a state-funded medical institution and began his career as a doctor). However, all such cases identified by us are still included in the database because, among other things, they illustrate the interrelationships within the Russian leadership. We apologize to those relatives of the subjects of our study who work and earn their living honestly and do not want to be associated with members of their family who work for Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Second: Many of the sources (primarily data leaks) on which we relied are fragmentary and unsystematic. They contain errors. Inaccuracies and deliberate falsehoods are also present in open data and media reports. We took these factors into account, trying to verify controversial facts by relying on two or more documents, in particularly important cases, we checked hypotheses about kinship using sources on the “data mining” market, and so on. Despite all this, inaccuracies are still possible in our database. They can be of two types: a) we included a relative in the study, mistaking them for a public official; b) we mistakenly did not include a relative in the study because data about them had been removed from databases and the media.

Therefore, we reserve the right to make further changes to our database. We welcome reader feedback and would be grateful for any information that may be useful.

Third: When writing the bios, we were occasionally forced to use information from “non-traditional” media outlets—anonymous Telegram channels and websites specializing in reprinting “blackmail material.” In some cases, us quoting such sources is explained by censorship and the removal of original articles from web search engines (read more about problems with access to information here). In all such cases, we indicated in the text that the source of information does not comply with journalistic standards.

Fourth: For the convenience of our readers, we omitted legal nuances in the names of various categories of government officials. In most cases, we use the terms “civil servant” and “official.”

Fifth: For the convenience of our readers, in some cases we have simplified the terms for specific family relationships (for example, to refer to an aunt by marriage (i.e., not related by blood to the subject’s uncle’s wife), we used the term “aunt,” etc.). In cases where we were unsure of the exact nature of the relationship, we used the terms “relative” and “inlaw”

Sixth: For methodological reasons, we did not include certain categories of important civil servants in the study. For example, members of the governments of large and wealthy regions, such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, were not included. Nepotism and conflicts of interest are also prevalent among these officials, but it would not have been possible to study the biographies of all vice governors and ministers in all regions of Russia as part of our special project.

The database is structured in an intuitive way. Users can search for officials and their relatives in alphabetical order or by subject area (Kremlin, government, security forces, State Duma, Federation Council, etc.).

In cases where the family trees of officials from different departments intersect (for example, the rector of one of Russia’s most significant universities, MIPT, former Minister of Education Dmitry Livanov is related to Senator and another former member of the government Dmitry Rogozin), the full bio is provided in the section dedicated to the main place of work of the person in question (Livanov’s is in the MIPT section, Rogozin’s is in the Federation Council section).

This pictogram ★ in an official’s bio indicates that he or she holds an officer’s rank or works in any of the security or law enforcement agencies.

The database does not include the names and positions of those officials whose biographies did not reveal any signs of nepotism or conflict of interest. We studied the biographies of 1,329 civil servants and found that 1,012 of them had relatives in government or state-affiliated spheres. If you know for certain that some official who is not included in our database has arranged a government position for someone close to them, please contact us at nepotism@proekt.media.