For almost all major politicians, life is never private. Silvio Berlusconi is a fine example. Even if one wanted to, it would be hard not to know the latest about his family life, indeed his various dalliances. Politicians across the western world usually just have to deal with life in a fishbowl. Except for one: Berlusconi’s old friend and vacation mate, Vladimir Putin, who has managed to impose an information blockade around his private life that most statesmen can only dream about.
Although Putin has ruled Russia for more than a decade, the Russian public does not even know what his adult daughters look like. There are many conflicting reports as to whether they are married and in what country they reside, and an Internet search of their names — Maria Putina, born 1985, and Yekaterina Putina, born 1986 — yields no confirmed photographs of them in adulthood, let alone interviews. What it does yield is a bewildering assortment of theories and gossip about Putin’s family life, but nothing journalistically solid. Russia’s mass media have been taught that such matters are out of bounds.
