She was born in St. Petersburg in 2003 to a woman who had once worked as a store cleaner. Today, she manages art galleries in Paris under a false name — because her real identity could make her one of the most closely watched young women on earth.
Her name is Elizaveta Krivonogikh, and she is widely believed to be the secret, illegitimate daughter of Vladimir Putin.
Her mother, Svetlana, had a modest background until the late 1990s, when she allegedly entered into a relationship with a then-rising Vladimir Putin. Almost overnight, she acquired stakes in a Kremlin-linked bank, luxury apartments in St. Petersburg, a ski resort, a yacht, and a $4 million apartment in Monaco — purchased just five months after Elizaveta was born. The 2021 Pandora Papers confirmed the Monaco property. The UK later sanctioned Svetlana for promoting Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Elizaveta’s birth certificate lists no father, but gives her the patronymic “Vladimirovna” — meaning “daughter of Vladimir” in Russian tradition. In 2020, the respected Russian investigative outlet Proekt published a detailed report identifying her as Putin’s likely child, noting her striking physical resemblance to him. The Kremlin’s response was to ban Proekt and drive its journalists into exile.
For years she lived quietly on Instagram as “Luiza Rozova,” posting a glamorous lifestyle to 84,000 followers. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, she went silent. By late 2024, Ukrainian investigators tracked her to Paris, where she had been studying arts management at a private university under yet another false name — one linked to a deceased close associate of Putin. Leaked airline records confirmed the alias matched her exact date of birth and phone number.
By 2025, she was managing two Paris galleries known for displaying anti-war art. In cryptic social media posts, she has referenced someone who “destroyed” her life and took “millions of lives” — without naming him.
Putin has never acknowledged her existence. But the Pandora Papers, leaked flight records, academic documents, and years of multi-country investigative journalism make this story very hard to dismiss.
