THE PUTINS ANNOUNCE ... THE END

VLADIMIR & LYUDMILA 

PUTIN 

DIVORCE 

THE PUTINS HOSTING 
THE FIRST RUSSIAN G8 SUMMIT 
St. Petersburg, July 2006 

Today the Russian President and First Lady publicly announced the end of their marriage.  They did make one -- last? -- public appearance together today, attending one act of the ballet Esmeralda, at the Kremlin Palace. 

Some discussion here and here. 

LYUDMILA PUTIN RE-EMERGES; VLADIMIR PUTIN IS TO BE PRESIDENT AGAIN

LYUDMILA PUTIN

THEN

LYUDMILA PUTINA

March 26, 2000

at her polling place in Moscow

Here she stands by her man, Vladimir Putin (or rather, walks by him) on that day in 2000 of Putin's first election as president; here she stands with him at the heights at the 2006 G-8 summit in St. Petersburg.

The last reported sighting of the Putins together was in 2010 (see here).

Today Putin's official website leads its coverage of the election by announcing that "Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila vote at in [sic] the Russian presidential elections." (The Russian version is here.) Official photographs of the event, showing the Putins together (standing, and sitting while he marks his ballot) can be found here.

There is a video of the president-to-be-again casting his ballot here (along the way he drops one of the two ballot papers; retrieves it himself). Later he celebrates his victory, and cries (tears up?).

Just for comparison (ballot boxes and all), here is Boris Yeltsin voting in his first Russian presidential election (June 12, 1991).

THE MISSING PUTIN: LYUDMILA PUTINA

VLADIMIR PUTIN

ADDRESSES THE

FIRST LADY ISSUE

LYUDMILA PUTIN

ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

JULY 2006

In advance of the Russian presidential election March 4, Vladimir Putin summoned the editors of six foreign newspapers to a group interview over dinner and hockey. Along the way he let it be known that he might be willing to run again in six years (to serve until 2024), but that his wife, Lyudmila, in the words of the New York Times, "may not carry out the duties of a first lady if he wins a third presidential term." In Putin's words, "I cannot say it's easy for her to deal with this," and blamed this on the "ruthless" media.

The Guardian reports that the Putins "have not been seen together in public since 2010." When Putin's press secretary was pressed on the subject last year, he blamed not the media but "Vladimir Putin's full working schedule."

Two photographs of the happy couple can be seen here and here.

THE PUTINS AT THE HEIGHTS

THE PUTINS AT THE HEIGHTS

HALF-A-DOZEN YEARS LATER

(see previous post, March 26, 2010)

VLADIMIR & LYUDMILA PUTIN

HOSTING A DINNER

FOR THE G-8

AT THE PETERHOF PALACE

ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

TEN YEARS ON: A DECADE SINCE VLADIMIR PUTIN WAS FIRST ELECTED PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA

TEN YEARS ON

A DECADE SINCE

PUTIN WAS FIRST ELECTED

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA

VLADIMIR PUTIN EMERGES

FROM VOTING IN

THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,

MOSCOW, MARCH 26, 2000.

ON THE LEFT IS HIS WIFE,

LYUDMILA PUTINA.