Dozens of Putin's security guards had been traveling abroad with his daughter Katerina Tikhonova for years, accompanying her on dates or visits to spa hotels. According to Vazhnye Istorii (Important stories), millions of rubles from the state budget were spent on the flights. Hotel reservations for Tikhonova and her escorts were handled by Alexei Skripchak, a presidential security official whose email archive was obtained by Vazhnye Istorii.
The main travel destination for Tikhonova and numerous security guards was Germany, where her boyfriend Igor Zelensky worked. She flew there almost every month.
According to Skripchak's email archive, he booked a hotel for the guards accompanying Tikhonova almost 100 times between 2016 and 2021. A third of the reservations came from Russia, more than 40 from Germany, and the rest were made in Austria and Italy.
Hotel reservations for so many escorts cost more than a million rubles per trip, the publication notes. “There is no information in Skripchak's archive as to who paid for these trips, but apparently the Presidential Security Service employees' business trips were paid for from the budget,” Vazhnye Istorii writes.
The media reported on the relationship between Tikhonova and the former head of the Bavarian State Ballet, Igor Zelensky, in May. Zelensky's contract with the ballet was supposed to end in 2025, but he announced in April that he was quitting for family reasons. Supposedly, he was fired because he refused to publicly condemn the war unleashed by Russia in Ukraine.