Project learned this by analyzing a leaked database from the Federal Border Service. Based on it, next week the publication will release a major investigation, “Fellow Travelers”, about where Russian officials fly, with whom, and on what.
The longest trip, according to the publication, took place at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020: Katerina Tikhonova and ballet master Igor Zelensky took Elza to Munich, a city in Germany, for two months. On this trip, they were accompanied by nannies Anna Tabankova, Natalya Snytko, Natalya Letnikova, and Lyudmila Architskaya.
In addition to the nannies, the group included English teacher Yulia Zhirnova, French and Arabic teacher Mohammed Benkhelifa, Tikhonova’s likely assistant Natalya Bratan, FSO officer Artem Kuts, and Svetlana Skripak. The article separately says that Skripak’s biography does not explain her role on this trip.
The authors of the publication note that Elza should have been only two years old at the time. Two years later, Katerina Tikhonova, Igor Zelensky, and Elza flew to Croatia for a week without nannies or teachers, but accompanied by four FSO officers at once.
On that same trip, as Project writes, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, whom the article describes as close to Vladimir Putin, flew with them. His wife, Natalya Popova, according to the same publication, is a colleague, friend, and frequent companion of Katerina Tikhonova.
The Bombardier Global 5000 aircraft on which the family flew for vacation belongs to an offshore company owned by oligarch Alexey Repik. The publication also says that Elza Tikhonova was born in 2017 in Katerina Tikhonova’s second marriage; her first chosen partner was Kirill Shamalov, the son of Vladimir Putin’s friend from the Ozero cooperative, Nikolai Shamalov, and later she was in a relationship with Igor Zelensky.
