Putin’s wife, a former flight attendant, cites ‘problems with flying’ in announcing divorce

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his wife of 29 years, Lyudmilla Putin, announced Thursday on state television that they are divorcing. “It was our joint decision,” she said, according to the Associated Press translation. “I don’t like publicity, and flying is difficult for me.” Moscow-run Voice of Russia translated her words as, “I have problems with flying.”

“I don’t like flying” is a strange rationale for divorce after three decades of marriage to a man who spent five years as prime minister and nine as president, not to mention a career in the KGB, all of which has presumably involved a great deal of flying. If she has a problem with flying so severe that it would break up their marriage, wouldn’t they have split up many years ago?

To make things stranger still, there’s good evidence that Russia’s first lady actually loves to fly. To wit, her first career was as a flight attendant for Aeroflot, for which she was working domestic flights out of Kaliningrad when she met her future ex-husband.

Here’s a snip, told by Lyudmilla herself, from the Putin family’s official autobiography, “First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President“: