In the mid-18th century, one woman had a colossal influence on the politics of France, and therefore of all Europe: the famous mistress of King Louis XV, the Marquise de Pompadour. This does not mean, however, that women at that time had the same rights as men, particularly in the governance of the state. There is a theory that Pompadour was backed by influential men who allegedly arranged for the king to meet the beauty, hoping to increase their own influence over His Majesty through her. In this sense, modern Russia is not far behind 18th century France — it is still difficult for women to pursue a career in government without influential men backing them, and they are still being exploited in the same way as the Marquise de Pompadour was. Our story begins with some enterprising young folks who decided to gain favor by introducing Putin to an underage mistress.

The pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi (which originated in 2000 and was initially called Walking Together) has played an interesting role in Russian history. More than twenty years ago, young people would organize protests where they threw undesirable books into toilets, or impale plastic heads of human rights activists on stakes. In short, they were doing all the things that have now become the norm.

In the 2000s, such performances reminiscent of Nazi Germany seemed bizarre, so it was quite appropriate to call Nashi members “Nashists” and “jubilant gopniks.” But they were not at all embarrassed about it, as if they knew they were setting standards for the future. All the more so because the country’s leadership promised them, at least on paper, a brilliant career. Nashi was supervised by Vladislav Surkov, first deputy head of Putin’s administration. In 2005, he literally said to the jubilant youth gathered at the famous pro-Kremlin camp on Lake Seliger: “We will hand over the country to you.” This promise even started to come true to some extent: two years later, the movement’s founder Vasily Yakemenko became head of the government’s State Committee (later renamed Federal Agency) for Youth Affairs, and at least 13 others would at various times occupy positions of some significance in federal government structures, from Civic Chamber to various ministries. Some of these young people (which we have gathered in the gallery below) are quite important to our story.

They all understood perfectly well that the authorities were not expecting them to improve the lives of Russians. Their main goal was to please Putin, to get his attention. The most important day of the year , as a former Nashi member recalls in conversation with Proekt × was October 7—Putin’s birthday. “You couldn’t take vacation before that day,” recalls a former Nashist. Instead, young people were instructed to come up with ideas for what to give the national leader, how to please and surprise him. For each Nashi member, coming up with a good idea was a real chance to get the attention of the country’s leaders.

Until now, only part of the story behind the gift given by Nashi to then-Prime Minister Putin on his 58th birthday was known. On October 6, 2010, the movement’s press secretary Kristina Potupchik published an erotic calendar on her blog, each page of which featured a photo of girls dressed in sexy lingerie with ambiguous slogans such as: “How about a third time?” That question had political undertones — at the time, the country was wondering whether Putin would run for a third presidential term.

Nine of these models were students at Moscow State University’s journalism department, two were graduates of the same university, and one (pictured on the April page) was a 17-year-old applicant who was not accepted that year. Her name was Alisa Kharcheva.

It soon became clear that the birthday boy liked the gift from the Nashists. Putin’s press secretary Peskov publicly announced that the prime minister had received the calendar and hoped that the journalism department would not punish the models for the candid photo shoot. That seemed to be the end of the story. But six years later, Reuters discovered a crucial detail: in 2015, Alisa received a luxury apartment in Moscow from a certain Grigory Baevsky. It turned out that Baevsky was a man of Arkady Rotenberg, Putin’s friend. This intermediary also provided apartments to the president’s own daughter Katerina Tikhonova, as well as to the grandmother of Putin’s mistress Alina Kabaeva. In short, Alisa found herself in the company of women close to the head of state, and, as many could already guess at the time, it was with a purpose.

Proekt was able to establish the details of that story, which, as is now clear, is entirely in keeping with the spirit of the times of the Marquise de Pompadour. We spoke at different times with four people directly involved in Kharcheva meeting Putin, and also discovered new information confirming the head of state’s long-term relationship with the young woman.

Alisa was born into the family of professional bandy player Vsevolod Kharchev, who once played for Dynamo Moscow. However, by the time the girl wanted to enroll at Moscow State University, he had long since left the club and had been thinking about ending his career for several years.

So, she could hardly count on her father’s help in building a prosperous future. The applicant got lucky though — their friends introduced her to Vladimir Tabak, a journalism graduate who was not a member of Nashi, but worked closely with them (one of his biographies states that at the time he was “head of the Presidential Administration’s creative group for developing Internet projects”). This then-unknown classmate of Yuri Dud also pondered how to please Putin on his birthday. It was he who came up with the idea of an erotic calendar. Tabak agreed on the plan with the Nashi leaders Vasily Yakemenko and Vladislav Surkov (the organization’s curator in the Kremlin). He told them that in this way, young people would show the authorities the loyalty of the journalism faculty, which was considered a stronghold of the opposition , says one of our sources × .

Nashi were certainly no puritans even before that. An acquaintance of Yakemenko recalls that “girls were always hanging out in Vasily’s office.” Vasily actively mixed work and personal life—he married an activist from his own organization, Maria Soboleva. Later, Yakemenko recalled in an interview: “I was never involved in politics. I was involved in courting women.”

Anyway, the erotic idea was approved. Moreover, the contacts of the female students were sent to the Kremlin along with a complimentary copy of the calendar.

Alisa got a call fairly quickly (“less than a month later,” recalls one of our interlocutors) — the voice on the other end greeted her and suggested a meeting at the prime minister’s countryside residence (apparently referring to Novo-Ogaryovo, located in the Moscow region). The caller was probably Putin’s assistant, although one of our interlocutors recounts rumors circulating among the Nashists that it was the prime minister himself, impressed by the girl’s photo. All the participants in this story who spoke to us agree on one thing: an intimate relationship began between Kharcheva and Putin.

The girl visited the prime minister regularly. These visits, of course, coincided with the departures of Alina Kabaeva, who was already Putin’s main lover at the time, from the residence. The prime minister’s official wife Lyudmila was no longer living with him at that time.

Her romance with Putin was, of course, kept secret, but no one was hiding Alisa herself from the public. On the contrary, when the girl wanted to participate in the Miss Russia contest, she immediately found herself in the final, which was broadcast by the state-owned NTV channel owned by Putin’s friends , primarily Yuri Kovalchuk’s structures × .

The whole country, unaware of this, watched as the head of government’s mistress passed one stage after another: parading in a swimsuit and evening gown, answering questions from the jury. How would Alice spend $7 million (for some reason, the host offered the other girls less)? She would give it to her parents, buy gifts for her brother and friends, “get new jackets for her dogs,” and invest some of the money in a business, she responded confidently. Unlike the other contestants, she didn’t say a word about her personal needs. Which of the finalists would she choose as the winner? Anastasia Mashukova from Krasnoyarsk, Alisa said. Kharcheva’s favorite would ultimately be declared the runner-up, and the winner’s crown would go to Natalya Gantimurova, another girl with a background, who is related to former State Duma member Sergei Markidonov. Putin’s mistress modestly settled for the top ten. This is perhaps the only difference from a similar court beauty contest that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov organized for his concubines a few years earlier. That contest was won by “his women”.

Nashi realized quite quickly that the connection between Kharcheva and Putin could be used to their advantage. Before each trip to meet with Putin the Nashists asked Alisa to convey one request or another to her man. But the young girl failed to become the new Madame de Pompadour. Either she herself did not insist too much on the ideas she brought to Putin, or he simply did not like them. In any case, our interlocutors cannot recall any of the initiatives that Alisa brought to Putin’s bed being implemented. Moreover, one of our interlocutors believes that attempts to take advantage of his romance must have annoyed the Russian president.

One way or another, about a year later, the relationship ended — Putin stopped inviting Alisa to visit him. 

By coincidence, at about the same time, Nashi lost the trust of the country’s leadership altogether. In late 2011, just after Putin’s decision about “the third time,” months of mass protests began in the country, which the Nashists were unable to counter. The organization was disbanded, Surkov was removed from his position as the Kremlin’s curator of domestic policy, and Yakemenko was dismissed from the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh).

However, Vladimir Tabak, who had spotted Alisa, managed to get noticed – since then, the Kremlin has entrusted him with important tasks on more than one occasion, including work in Putin’s presidential campaign headquarters – at least in 2018, he was introduced to a Proekt correspondent as a member of the campaign team × . Now the producer of the erotic calendar heads the propaganda organization Dialog. 

Its mission is to promote the government’s agenda on the internet. But that’s not all Dialog does. The Kremlin has entrusted this multi-billion-dollar organization with one very delicate task. This is the most scandalous part of Alisa Kharcheva’s story.

In the late 2010s, Alisa’s father was out of work — he was too old to play hockey, and his coaching career didn’t work out. In 2020, he was hired by Tabak — this was one of the rare examples of reverse career inheritance, when parents receive positions and wealth thanks to the “success” of their children (you can find several such examples in our special project).

In recent years, Kharchev has been receiving a salary of approximately 100,000 rubles per month from Tabak according to the financial statements of Dialog, which Proekt got access to × . It is unknown what a former hockey player may be doing in a propaganda organization.

So, Putin valued the well-being of the father of the 17-year-old girl he once fancied at 100,000 rubles a month. Alisa herself received not just the aforementioned apartment. As one of our interlocutors put it, she was also “gotten into” Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). During her relationship with Putin, the girl lost interest in journalism, so when she was offered to choose any university in the country to study at, she preferred MGIMO, where she was immediately enrolled. She is now the co-owner of a tanning studio called Bronzeglow and maintains relationships with her “benefactors” — at least in 2021, she flew to Turkey on a business jet accompanied by Kristina Potupchik.

Of course, the role of women in Russian politics is not limited to such medieval-like examples.

In total, there are 194 women in leadership positions in the government agencies and state-owned businesses we studied, which is 15% of all top officials in Russia. At the same time, our database includes 130 women, or 13% of those studied, who have relatives in government or state-owned businesses. 

Undoubtedly, some of them rose to the top because of their abilities or willingness to participate in the most terrible plans of the country’s leadership on par with men. An obvious example of the latter is State Duma member Irina Yarovaya, who, over many years of work in the Duma, has co-authored nearly 300 draconian bills. In 2012, when the Duma passed the so-called “law of scoundrels,” which prohibited Americans from adopting Russian children, the Kremlin chose women (MPs Ekaterina Lakhova, Elena Afanasyeva and Olga Batalina) to be its authors and promoters.

In other cases (and there are many), women receive high-ranking positions through assistance of a male patron, at least in the early stages of her career. Until now, the most famous example of this kind was Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova. In the 1990s, this energetic young woman was building a career in the Ministry of Finance, where she could surely end up heading one of the departments sooner or later. But in 1997, her future husband Viktor Khristenko came into her life. He briefly joined the Ministry of Finance as deputy minister and then quickly moved on to become deputy prime minister. The officials started an office romance, and Golikova’s career took off. The 32-year-old financier was almost immediately promoted to head of the budget department, which was crucial to her ministry, and a year later she became deputy minister. After that, she probably did without her husband’s help — having gained Putin’s trust, she served as minister, presidential aide, head of the Accounts Chamber, and deputy prime minister.

However, there is one even more influential woman in the Russian leadership, the reason for whose career successes has never before been revealed. We are talking about the most high-ranking woman in Russia in the last two centuries.

Valentina Matviyenko, Chairwoman of the Federation Council, loves to look good. So much so that her assistants have compiled a set of her best photos, which they insist that journalists working in parliament use. Attractive looks played a significant, if not the most important, role in the career of young Komsomol member Valentina Tyutina (Matviyenko is her married name).

A native of Shepetivka, Ukraine (a city in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast that has come under Russian fire several times in recent years), she came to Leningrad in 1967 to study at the Chemical-Pharmaceutical Institute, but began to rise through the ranks not through at work, but also in the Komsomol. At one of the meetings of the activists, she caught the eye of Viktor Lobko, who in the 1970s was first the second and then the first secretary of the Leningrad Komsomol.

Her romantic relationship with this man gave the initial boost to Matviyenko’s impressive career , recalls Andrei Korchagin, who at various times headed the Nevsky District of St. Petersburg and the traffic management department. A Leningrad journalist from those years told Proekt the same × . Within a few years, the girl became the first secretary of the Petrograd District Committee of the Komsomol.

In this position, she was noticed by a much more important official of that era — the “master” of Leningrad himself. This was the title given to Grigory Romanov, first secretary of the Leningrad Oblast Committee and member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He ruled Leningrad throughout the entire period of “stagnation,” and in the 1980s, he almost became the leader of the USSR instead of Mikhail Gorbachev, which would undoubtedly have set the history of the state on a different path. Romanov was notorious for his dogmatism; he actively opposed dissenters and participated in the persecution of creative intellectuals such as Joseph Brodsky, Olga Bergholz and Sergei Dovlatov.

Matviyenko calls Romanov her “teacher.” It was on his recommendation , according to Proekt’s source who knew her from her Komsomol work × that she first became head of the Leningrad Komsomol at the age of 32, then the head one of the city’s districts, and by the age of 37 she was already deputy chair of the Leningrad Executive Committee , a counterpart to today’s city government × — all this during a time of masculine gerontocracy, when the USSR was ruled by men who were visibly dying of old age. Matviyenko later repaid both of her patrons — after becoming governor of St. Petersburg, she made Lobko her deputy, and despite fierce protests from the city’s residents, she erected a memorial plaque in the city to the late Romanov. In private conversations, Matviyenko would sometimes boast a little about her turbulent youth. “I know you have nothing bad in your past. Neither do I — except for the sins of my youth,” she said in 2003 to one of the St. Petersburg MPs whom she asked for support in the gubernatorial election , as this man told Proekt × .

The “sins of youth” apparently include Matviyenko’s passion for party and Komsomol banquets, which earned her the nickname “Valya Polstakana” (Valya Half-Glass), which later became public knowledge. Matviyenko took this with humor and, when asked by documentary filmmaker Igor Shadkhan if she had the nickname “Valya Stakan” (Valya Glass), she replied: “I don’t remember a whole glass, but there was half a glass, was it different for you?” 

“Usually, it was just the men and her at the drinking parties. They drank vodka. Valentina would put her hand on the glass and say, ‘Just half a glass for me,’ because she didn’t want to get drunk. But she did drink quite a lot,“

says former St. Petersburg official Andrei Korchagin , who knows this from Matviyenko’s Komsomol comrades. Korchagin himself worked in Matviyenko’s team for many years and eventually fled the country after becoming involved in a corruption case. According to Korchagin, the case was trumped up, and the reason for this was his refusal to participate in a scheme to launder budget funds, proposed to him by Valentina Matviyenko’s son Sergei ×

Another source interviewed by Proekt remembers seeing her on a night train to Moscow in the early 1990s — at that time, she was studying at the Diplomatic Academy in the capital — with an English textbook and a decanter of vodka.

Matviyenko also owed her diplomatic career (in 1991–1998, she was Russia’s ambassador to Malta and Greece, and also held positions in the Foreign Ministry), which began in the year of the collapse of the USSR, to a male patron — this time, Yevgeny Primakov, a former intelligence officer and well-known figure in the Soviet elite. He noticed the young Leningrad woman among the people’s deputies of the USSR in the late 1980s, when he headed one of the chambers of the Supreme Soviet. Matviyenko was one of the youngest members of parliament, representing the Committee of Soviet Women, an ideologized structure accountable to the CPSU and supervised by the KGB.

“Acquaintances who came from the congresses of people’s deputies said that even in public they constantly hugged and kissed each other as if they were friends, but it all looked very strange,” Korchagin recalls. A Leningrad journalist and high-ranking official of those years heard about the romance between Primakov and Matviyenko at the time. When Primakov became prime minister in 1998, he appointed Matviyenko as his deputy. Later, he allegedly introduced her to Putin, who liked her for her diligence , Korchagin heard × . Another acquaintance of Matviyenko, a former St. Petersburg and federal official, confirms that Primakov did assist her with her career, but, in his opinion, there was no romance between them. “Valentina Ivanovna is very hard-working,” said our interlocutor with undisguised admiration. It is true that Matviyenko’s career successes cannot be attributed solely to the help of men. It was Primakov who made her deputy prime minister in his government in 1998, but even after his resignation and serious conflict with the country’s leadership, Matviyenko managed to not only retain her high position, but also make her way further up.

This woman’s enviable government career over the past forty years has developed against a backdrop of heavy personal drama. While still a student, Valentina Tyutina married for the first and only time in her life — to her classmate at the Leningrad Chemical and Pharmaceutical Institute Vladimir Matviyenko. Since the 1980s, he had suffered from a serious illness that deprived him of his mobility multiple sclerosis, according to two acquaintances of Matviyenko × , which is why, for example, he did not accompany his wife to Greece when she was appointed ambassador there , recalls Alexander Baunov, who worked at the embassy at the same time × , and at the age of 55 he was forced to leave his post at the Military Medical Academy.

Soon after, his illness was compounded by a tragic event. In the fall of 1999, his wife, then deputy prime minister, was involved in a terrible car accident during a business trip to Penza — three people were killed, but the official herself suffered only minor injuries. In the ensuing commotion, her husband was mistakenly told that Valentina had died, and Vladimir suffered a stroke, which, in addition to his other problems, left him partially paralyzed , two St. Petersburg journalists from that time know this, one of whom heard about it from the then deputy director of the FSB Viktor Cherkesov × . In 2018, Vladimir Matviyenko passed away from cancer — before that, he had been moribund for about six months in a St. Petersburg clinic of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and his wife, who had moved to Moscow several years earlier for the position of Chairwoman of the Federation Council, often visited him. , recalls doctor and political emigrant Petr Voskresensky, who worked at the hospital at the time × .

“We always avoided talking about two topics, knowing that she had two heavy burdens,” recalls a correspondent for one of the St. Petersburg newspapers of the early 2000s. The first topic was her seriously ill husband. The second was her son Sergei, whom Matviyenko gave birth to in 1973, at the very beginning of her Komsomol career. “He grew up without parents — his father was seriously ill, his mother was at regional committee banquets,” recalls a journalist who worked in Leningrad in the 1980s.

“Once, during a government meeting, an aide approached her and whispered something in her ear,” recalls St. Petersburg journalist Sergei Kovalchenko. “Later, Smolny employees secretly told us that she had allegedly been informed that her son had died of an overdose. She didn’t change her expression at all and continued to chair the meeting.” The news turned out to be false — apparently, the overdose did occur, but it was not fatal. However, the rumors were so persistent that the governor soon had to attend a football match with her son just for him to appear in front of the cameras.

Sergei became addicted to drugs in his youth. “Before class, he would constantly offer me something — drugs completely destroyed his brain, it was very noticeable in his behavior,” recalls Matviyenko’s classmate at the St. Petersburg Academy of Culture. In the late 1990s, when Matviyenko Jr. was studying to be a manager at that academy, he was caught with a dose of drugs and even spent a short time in the Kresty detention center, but was released after his mother intervened , his coursemate recalls × . This was not the first time Matviyenko’s son had had a run-in with the law. In 1994, while his mother was working as a diplomat in Malta, Matviyenko Jr. and his friend beat up an acquaintance on the street, extorting money from him, and later tried to steal books, jewelry, and household appliances from his apartment . The case details were published in the media in the early 2000s, and Korchagin is also well aware of this story × . The case was so serious that Matviyenko had to rush to St. Petersburg to resolve the problem herself, but even that was not enough — Primakov, then director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, had to personally call the St. Petersburg law enforcement authorities , as Korchagin heard × . In the end, the case was closed, and Matviyenko, tired of her son’s antics, sent him to study in London , his classmate recalls × .

But the official had no other heirs, so when it came to the opportunity to secretly enrich herself, Sergei started to get showered with expensive assets registered in his name. To begin with, Valentina Matviyenko needed an old acquaintance. It was Alexander Savelyev, a former official and then a successful banker, with whom she had been briefly involved in a joint business venture in the early 1990s — a transport company ZAO Komavtoservis, of which Matviyenko co-owned × . This man started helping Sergei, probably at his mother’s request. First, he bought him an apartment next to his own in an elite building on Moskovsky Prospekt , Korchagin knows this, and it is confirmed by leaked data about Savelyev and Matviyenko’s real estate, which was studied by Proekt × , then brought him into the St. Petersburg Bank, which Savelyev owned, giving him a small stake and a position as an advisor on information technology. When Matviyenko became governor in 2003, a significant portion of the city’s budget funds began to pass through the bank. As if by magic, immediately after her election, it won the tender to service budget accounts. Sergei Matviyenko immediately became the bank’s vice president.

However, his career did not stop there. That same year, Sergei registered the Imperia holding company, which, through various schemes, took possession of numerous historic buildings in the city center. At the end of his mother’s eight-year reign in the northern capital of Russia, her son’s business assets were valued at approximately $1 billion.

Is Matviyenko really a gifted businessman? Anyone can answer this question by simply watching Sergei’s 2011 interview with Oleg Tinkov. In it, Matviyenko Jr., clearly in an altered state of mind, spouted economic terms that he had no understanding of.

He would later claim that he was “using a marketing ploy” by pretending to be a heroin addict. This is hard to believe, however, as Sergei continued to get himself into trouble — he was caught with drugs in a nightclub and kicked off a flight for causing a disturbance , these stories were told to Proekt by three sources — two St. Petersburg reporters from those years who requested anonymity, and journalist Dmitry Gubin × . Once again, his mother had to deal with the consequences. She even had to assign a chaperone to her adult son — Andrei Kutepov, head of the administration of the Primorsky District of St. Petersburg. He accompanied Sergei to clubs and on trips and made sure he didn’t get into trouble , this is known to journalist Dmitry Gubin and another St. Petersburg journalist who requested anonymity. It is also confirmed by the significant number of joint flights taken by Kutepov and Sergei Matviyenko, whose details were leaked × . After becoming Matviyenko’s “babysitter”, Kutepov naturally became rich — his family acquired the historic St. Petersburg cinemas Khudozhestvenny and Neva, as well as plots of land on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, without bidding and at a reduced price. When Matviyenko moved to the Federation Council in 2011, she took Kutepov with her to Moscow and made him a senator.

Naturally, after the mother left St. Petersburg, the son’s business empire collapsed. Most of his companies have shut down, leaving him with only two profitable businesses — but they still bring in substantial sums, including money from government contracts . These are the development company Megalit-Okhta Group, in which Matviyenko acquired a stake in 2022, after which its profits grew exponentially, and the Parameter, which provides sewerage services, with a total portfolio of government contracts over ten years worth 3 billion rubles × . Over the past decade, Matviyenko Jr. has preferred to invest his earnings in real estate. One might even say he became obsessed with it. He currently owns properties in Moscow and St. Petersburg worth a total of almost 12 billion rubles, not to mention the numerous houses and apartments he has sold to date — for example, a 380-square-meter apartment in a St. Petersburg building where Nobel Prize winner Pyotr Kapitsa once lived, or land in the village of Sviyazhsk in Tatarstan on an island in the middle of the Volga River. However, Sergei’s main focus has long been outside of Russia. In that same 2011 interview with Tinkov, the wealthy heir spoke about his plans for retirement: “My plan is to sit in a rocking chair in Italy. I have a work permit signed by Berlusconi former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi × .” That is exactly what happened, long before 52-year-old Sergey Matviyenko reached retirement age. He owns a three-story villa and 26 hectares of land beneath it in the Italian town of Pesaro on the Adriatic coast. Despite sanctions and his mother having approved Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he spends time with his family there , as Italian journalists found out × . He also transferred his family’s assets to San Marino.

На протяжении последних десятилетий Матвиенко-младший предпочитал вкладывать заработанное в недвижимость. Даже, можно сказать, помешался на этом. На нынешний момент он владеет объектами в Москве и Петербурге на общую сумму почти 12 млрд руб., не говоря уже о многочисленных домах и квартирах, которые к нынешнему моменту продал — например, 380-метровой квартире в петербургском доме, где когда-то жил лауреат Нобелевки Петр Капица, или земли в селе Свияжск в Татарстане на островке посреди Волги. Но основной центр интересов Сергея давно не в России. Еще в том самом интервью Тинькову в 2011 году богатый наследник говорил о своих планах на пенсию: «Сидеть в кресле-качалке в Италии. У меня есть разрешение на работу, подписанное Берлускони – бывший премьер Италии Сильвио Берлускони × ». Именно так и вышло, причем задолго до достижения 52-летним Сергеем Матвиенко пенсионного возраста. Он владеет трехэтажной виллой и 26 гектарами земли под ней в итальянском городке Пезаро на побережье Адриатического моря — именно там, несмотря на санкции и одобренную матерью войну с Украиной, он с семьей проводит время , узнали итальянские журналисты × . Семейные активы он вывел в Сан-Марино . В Совете федерации не ответили на вопросы «Проекта» для Валентины Матвиенко. Сергей Матвиенко прочитал сообщение корреспондента «Проекта» и заблокировал его в мессенджере × .

The secret wealth is another incentive for women’s careers in today’s Russia.

Rostourism is a government agency, almost a ministry, which has long been responsible for the development of the entire tourism industry in Russia. Since Zarina Doguzova was appointed head of Rostourism in 2019, most officials interviewed by journalists have suggested that she is someone’s mistress.

An unmarried, striking native of South Ossetia has made an incredible career by the age of 33 – after studying at MGIMO, she joined the government’s press service, then moved to the presidential office for public relations, and then, rising several steps up the career ladder at once, suddenly became Russia’s head of tourism.

In addition, Doguzova’s behavior was considered provocative by most officials: she appeared in public wearing such expensive clothes and jewelry that the media and Telegram channels were competing to calculate the cost of her outfits. The Anti-Corruption Foundation compiled a file containing only some of the young lady’s clothes, estimating the total value of her outfits at 30 million rubles.

The Anti-Corruption Foundation calculated the cost of Doguzova’s outfits

It is important to note that by Russian officials’ standards, Doguzova does not lead a particularly luxurious lifestyle. Proekt obtained data on purchases made at one of the country’s most fashionable stores, TsUM. Doguzova spent only 3.7 million rubles there. Other officials, MPs, and their wives spent much more. Here are the biggest spenders.

Who spent the most money in Tsum

From 2017 until 2024

Zulay Kadyrova Sister of the head of Chechnya

RUB 219.4 M

Elena Milskaia Wife of the head of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations

RUB 210 M

Aishat Kadyrova Daughter of the head of Chechnya

RUB 176.5 M

Fatima Khazueva Second wife of the head of Chechnya

RUB 150.5 M

Bekkhan Taymaskhanov Deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya

RUB 119.1 M

Umar Khapsirkov Brother of Senator Murat Khapsirokov

RUB 100.7 M

Elena Likhach Wife (or ex-wife) of State Duma member and billionaire Andrei Skoch

RUB 97 M

Zelimkhan Mutsoev State Duma member

RUB 87.9 M

Alla Nalcha Wife of State Duma member Dmitry Sablin

RUB 67.6 M

Marina Artemyeva Common-law wife of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev

RUB 65.4 M

Ilya Kolunov Son of State Duma member Sergey Kolunov

RUB 62.7 M

Elena Kolunova Wife of State Duma member Sergey Kolunov

RUB 62.1 M

Andrei Klishas Member of the Federation Council

RUB 60.6 M

Elena Latysheva Sister of Senator Evgenia Uvarkina

RUB 59.1 M

Tatyana Batalova Niece of State Duma member Alexei Tkachov

RUB 58.3 M

Petimat Akhmadova Sister of Senator Mokhmad Akhmadov

RUB 57.7 M

Some officials suggested at the time that Doguzova’s patron was Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Alexei Gromov, a well-known connoisseur of young Oriental-type women. Proekt can reliably assert that the reason for Doguzova’s success is not Gromov at all. Once again, it was a matter of family connections.

Fifty-two-year-old Igor Rotenberg is the eldest son of Arkady Rotenberg, a close friend of the Russian president who amassed a multibillion-dollar fortune solely thanks to his acquaintance with Putin. Igor was born into Arkady’s first family when the latter was in his early 20s. At that time, the future billionaire was involved in wrestling, worked as an extra at Lenfilm, and was probably involved in petty crime. Arkady would go on to have many more partners and children. His son Igor, like his father and only thanks to him, became quite successful: at an early age, he obtained a senior position in the Ministry of Property, at the age of 31, he became vice president of Russian Railways, whose informal curator is considered to be his parent, and later went into big state-affiliated business (in particular, he headed the board of directors of Gazprom Burenie).

On March 7, 2019, Igor boarded a private plane bound for Nice. He was accompanied by Zarina Doguzova, who had been appointed head of Rostourism exactly one month earlier. Perhaps the appointment needed to be celebrated at a European resort rather than a local one. Doguzova and Rotenberg’s trips to foreign destinations continued for three and a half years, even though Doguzova’s job was to develop tourism within Russia . Proekt counted at least 11 of their joint flights abroad in the leaked border crossing data × .

Joint flights of Doguzova and Rotenberg:

In her spare time from dating Rotenberg, Doguzova managed to record beautiful videos about her business trips around the country, but otherwise her work did not seem effective and clearly irritated her government superiors . At least, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, who oversees tourism among other things, spoke out at a public meeting with Putin against strengthening Doguzova’s department, which she herself had requested. The media later wrote about this conflict between the officials × . It all ended with Rostourism simply being abolished in 2022. The young woman was transferred to an insignificant position as an advisor to the rector of MGIMO. Doguzova surely wasn’t saddened too much by this, however— as soon as she received her new position, the former head of Russian tourism flew off to Dubai with her lover.

One notable aspect of this story is that Doguzova obtained a high-ranking position despite being merely one of Rotenberg’s female associates. He divorced his first wife Alina (née Kiseleva , known for furnishing the Rotenbergs’ family restaurant in Moscow, Gusyatnikoff × , back in 2009. Since then, he has been married to Inna Rotenberg, whom he has not divorced, although he took much less plane trips with her than with Doguzova — the last time the couple traveled together was in 2020. Rotenberg had another relationship no later than 2023 with a girl named Vladislava — she appears to be an escort girl, but in the summer of 2024, she gave birth to his child.

Other members of the elite also dislike getting officially divorced. For many years, the official wife of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has only existed as part of his income and asset declaration, which suggests that he lives within his means. A huge number of luxury assets are registered in the name of Svetlana Polyakova, his mistress, who has been living with the foreign minister for many years and flies with him on business trips and vacations.

Of course, registering your assets in someone else’s name is always a risk. Former Mari El head Leonid Markelov once registered his business and real estate in the name of his wife Irina. In 2012, she suddenly disappeared, leading the media to conclude that the couple had divorced, but no details were known at the time. This was actually a story worthy of being made into a mix of drama and detective film.

Irina was not very happy with her husband and used dating apps. There she matched with a man whose real name was Shimon Hayut, a con artist who pretended to be a rich man in trouble and used this pretext to scam his female admirers out of money. The governor’s wife fell so deeply in love that she sold some of the property registered in her name by her thieving husband and fled to London. Naturally, once he got the money, the swindler disappeared.

Irina was not his only victim — there were dozens of them, so eventually Hayut was caught and sent to prison, albeit for only 15 months at first, and then arrested again in September this year, this time in Georgia. In the end, this detective story really did turn into a movie — Netflix made a documentary called Tinder Swindler. The Markelovs did not feature in it, which is a pity, because their story had a sequel worthy of adaptation — the head of Mari El was sentenced to 13 years for corruption, and Irina was among those who testified against him.