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Russian President Vladimir Putin says some people in his family speak Chinese.
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“The members of my family, the little ones, speak fluent Chinese,” Putin said on Monday.
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China has remained a close economic ally of Russia throughout its war with Ukraine.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin says the “little ones” in his family can speak Chinese fluently.
Speaking to students at a high school in Kyzyl, Tuva, on Monday, Putin talked about his family’s familiarity with the language.
“By the way, there is a growing interest in the Russian language in China and vice versa,” Putin said, according to a translation by The Telegraph.
“My family members, the little ones, speak fluent Chinese.”
The Russian leader is known as mysterious about his family and his private life.
Putin shares two daughtersMaria Vorontsova and Katerina Tithonova, with his ex-wife, Lyudmila Shkrebneva. The couple announced their separation from 2013.
In 2017, Putin told filmmaker Oliver Stone during a interview that he was a grandfather, although it remains unclear how many grandchildren he has.
Putin’s comments on Monday should not… be surprising, given Russia’s position close relationship with China. The Asian giant is a close economic ally to Russia, amid the fierce war with Ukraine.
In February 2022, just before Russia invaded Ukraine, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Putin announced a “no limits” partnership after meeting on the sidelines of the Winter Games in Beijing that year.
However, Putin was quick to remind his audience that they should not focus only on the Chinese language.
“But that does not mean at all that we should forget about our interest in the English language. English is a great language, it has given humanity a lot in terms of combining knowledge and uniting people in culture and so on,” Putin said on Monday.
“We do not reject anything, we do not have hostile languages, we do not even have hostile countries. We have hostile elites in some countries that have been fighting Russia for centuries.”
Representatives from the Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, which was sent outside regular business hours.
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