Maria Putin, Vladimir Putin's daughters

Everything you need to know about Vladimir Putin's daughter as she flees Dutch home

Secret: Not much is known about Maria Putin

The lives of Maria Putin and her sister are cloaked in secrecy as the Russian president has always battled to keep them out the limelight.

The revelations that Vladimir Putin's daughter has had to flee her Dutch home will cause fury for the Russian president who has always fiercely shielded her from publicity.

Very little is known about Maria, 29, and her sister Ekaterina, and the president's spokesman has admitted that Putin demands a 'closed system' about his daughters.

As she goes into hiding, here's what we do know about Russia's first daughter.

She's named after her Grandmother

Maria, known as Masha, was born in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, in April 1985 and is named after Putin's mother.

Both Maria and her 27-year-old sister attended German-language schools and St Petersburg State University, where Maria studied biology and Ekaterina majored in Asian Studies.

Photos of her are few and far between

There are no official portraits of them as adults, but a photo of Maria recently popped up on Facebook, where it was grabbed by a Ukrainian news website that re-posted it — infuriating Putin, according to the Central European News photo agency.

She lives in Holland with her Dutch boyfriend.

Maria has lived with her boyfriend Jorrit Faassen in a penthouse in Voorschoten, an upscale village in the province of South Holland, not far from the Hague, since last year.

Dutch media claimed that Vladimir Putin visited Maria and her partner last year, but this was denied by his spokesman.

Her boyfriend was an executive at Russian state gas company Gazprom

Faassen has held senior roles in the Russian firms Gazprom and Stroytransgaz, a pipeline manufacturer, and hit the headlines when he was reportedly assaulted by the bodyguards of Russian banker Matvei Urin in a road-rage incident in Moscow in 2010.

Maria is understood to divide her time between Russia and the Netherlands, with the couple remaining very much within Putin's inner circle.

Details of her sister's life are also a fiercely guarded secret

There were reports that Ekaterina planned to wed the son of a South Korean admiral, though her life is shrouded in mystery too.

Their upbringing and schooling was hugely disrupted by their father's various jobs, initially as a KGB spy in East Germany.

They returned to Russia in 1991, and moved to Moscow in 1996, when Maria, aged 11, was enrolled by Putin in the Friedrich Haass German International School.

Later when he headed the FSB secret service and went on to become prime minister, he withdrew Maria from the international school, and she - and later her sister - were educated at home evidently for security reasons.

Putin still claims both his daughters live in Moscow

Putin has always denied that his daughter was in Holland, and in a television interview said that "both his daughters live in Moscow, where they’re combining their studies with part-time work.

“I’m proud of them."

Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/maria-putin-everything-you-need-3912791