Lyudmila Putina

Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Putina (Russian: Людми́ла Алекса́ндровна Пу́тина, pronounced [lʲʊdˈmʲilə ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvnə ˈputʲɪnə], Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Putina, née Shkrebneva, Шкребнева; born 6 January 1958), now known as Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, is the former wife of the President and former Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

Lyudmila was born in Kaliningrad, Soviet Union, the daughter of Alexander (his patronym is reported variously as either Abramovich or Avramovich) Shkrebnev (Александр Абрамович Шкребнев or Александр Аврамович Шкребнев) and Catherine Tikhonovna Shkrebneva (Екатерина Тихоновна Шкребнева). Her father worked at Kaliningrad Mechanical Plant.

She was educated as a linguist. In 1986, Lyudmila graduated from the branch of Spanish language and philology of the Department of Philology of Leningrad State University.

The Putins' wedding on 28 July 1983

In her early adult years Lyudmila was a flight attendant for the Kaliningrad branch of Aeroflot. She met Vladimir Putin in Leningrad, and they married on 28 July 1983. The couple had two daughters, Maria (born 1985) and Yekaterina (Katja) (born 1986 in Dresden, East Germany).

From 1990 to 1994 Lyudmila taught German at the Department of Philology of Leningrad State University. For a few years prior to Vladimir's appointment as Prime Minister of Russia in 1999, she was a Moscow representative of the company Telecominvest.

During this time the children attended the German School in Moscow (Deutsche Schule Moskau).

Lyudmila Putina with Vladimir Putin after his inauguration on 7 May 2000.

After Vladimir's rise to political power, Lyudmila maintained a low profile on the Russian political stage, generally avoiding the limelight except as required by protocol and restricting her public role to supportive statements about her husband. The children were withdrawn from the German School; their photographs have not been published by the Russian media, and no family portrait has ever been issued.

Role in spelling controversy

As First Lady, Lyudmila Putina was a curator of a fund that aimed to develop the Russian language and sometimes produced statements concerning Russian language and education. Her preference for "maintaining and preserving" the Russian language led her to make public statements against orthographic reform. The Russian Academy of Science sponsored a commission to study the orthography of the Russian language and propose changes. Their recommendations were made public in 2002 after eight years of work, but were subsequently shot down by Putina, who used Russia's burgeoning economy as one of her reasons why the orthographic reform was not just unnecessary but untimely. However, although one newspaper in Moscow alleged that "Lyudmila Putina de facto cancelled any attempts to reform spelling," the fact remains that public and academic reaction to the reforms was sufficiently negative to have that particular reform attempt abandoned.

On 6 June 2013, Lyudmila Putina and her husband publicly announced termination of their marriage based on a mutual decision. The divorce announcement was made on camera for Russian news media at the Moscow Kremlin palace, ending years of speculation about their relationship. In April 2014, the Kremlin confirmed that their divorce had been finalized.

In January 2016 Lyudmila was reported to have married a man called Artur Ocheretny in early 2015.