Russia’s New First Lady Keeps Low Profile

MOSCOW —  Where in the world is Ludmila Putin?

Since Vladimir V. Putin became Russia’s acting president on New Year’s Eve, his wife has barely been seen and never heard. She has appeared in public less than half a dozen times--and then only briefly. Not once has she uttered a word.

“I have absolutely no impression of her at all because I’ve never seen her at all,” said Yulia Nazarova, 30, a part-time seamstress. “Maybe that’s the way it should be.”

Today, Russians are expected to get another, perhaps longer, look at their reclusive new first lady, when her husband is duly sworn in as president in a somber Kremlin ceremony.

Mrs. Putin won’t be on stage, however--much less at her husband’s side, as Americans might expect--when he takes the oath. She’ll be somewhere in the audience. And she’s such an unknown figure that most Russians will have to rely on TV commentators to pick her out of the crowd.

“She will play no official role in the inauguration ceremony,” confirmed Natalia Timakova, deputy chief of the presidential press service.

Mrs. Putin, 42, is described as painfully shy, a consummate KGB wife. Her near-invisibility seems to be both her choice and her country’s preference. Russia hasn’t had a lot of experience with first ladies, and the country still seems uncomfortable with the idea of a public spouse.

“It’s been said that Russians consider our leaders married to the country,” said Masha Lipman, deputy editor of the Itogi news weekly. “So people are jealous of any wife that gets in the way.”

Mrs. Putin’s name appears in the inauguration program only once. After the oath, she is expected to have tea with her husband and former President Boris N. Yeltsin and his wife, Naina. The event has been described as private.

“This will have nothing to do with the transition of power,” Timakova said. “It will just be a friendly, informal meeting.”

Less than nine years after the Soviet collapse, Russia is still working out the symbols of public life. With little tradition to rely on, Kremlin officials have been working for weeks to come up with a ceremony that sends the right signals to a society that has broken with the past but is still developing a vision of the future.

The position of first lady also is something of a do-it-yourself job. Ludmila Putin has only two real predecessors: the late Raisa Gorbachev, who rubbed Russians the wrong way by cultivating a public role, and Naina Yeltsin, who earned their respect by shunning it.

Still, Mrs. Yeltsin grew increasingly visible after a few years, becoming a familiar figure at her husband’s side on public outings and foreign trips. She even played a modest political role, giving TV interviews to fend off questions about her husband’s health and alleged financial improprieties by her daughters.

Mrs. Putin, at least so far, has been much more retiring. After all, both Raisa Gorbachev and Naina Yeltsin were wives of Communist Party officials and had performed at least some public functions before their husbands became president.

By contrast, Ludmila Putin, as a KGB wife, was trained to stay in the shadows and never, ever discuss her husband’s business. A year ago, her husband was head of the KGB’s main successor agency, the Federal Security Service, and her personal life was completely shrouded in secrecy.

It is still largely a subject of speculation. Mrs. Putin has given only one interview, to three handpicked journalists who compiled an “instant” biography of her husband before his election in March.

“In the KGB, there was an understanding: Don’t discuss business with your wife,” Mrs. Putin told them. “Excessive openness has been known to lead to tearful consequences. We always followed the principle that the less your wife knows, the more soundly you sleep at night.”

But that was then. Now her husband is one of the world’s most powerful, and public, leaders. And Mrs. Putin--a short, plump woman with a heart-shaped face and cropped blond hair--is unlikely to be able to keep herself completely out of public view.

For instance, when British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited in March with his wife, Cherie, Mrs. Putin was forced by protocol to complete the foursome when her husband brought the visitors to the opera.

When Putin reciprocated by traveling to London last month, it would have been normal, even expected, for his wife to accompany him. But she stayed home.

“It’s hard to come up with any other explanation except that she simply didn’t know how” to make such a trip, Itogi’s Lipman said.

Mrs. Putin grew up as Ludmila Alexandrovna Shkrebneva in the port city of Kaliningrad. She was 21 and working as a stewardess when she met Putin on a blind date during a three-day trip to Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known. He was five years her senior--and modest to a fault.

“He was dressed plainly, even, I would say, poorly,” Mrs. Putin told the biographers. “He was so unremarkable I would have passed him on the street without noticing.”

They dated for about three years before marrying. During that time, she gave up her job as a stewardess and enrolled in Leningrad State University, eventually earning a graduate degree in modern languages. Her future husband told her that he worked for the police, in “criminal investigations”--a common euphemism among KGB agents. But before they married, he told her the truth.

“At that time, the KGB, criminal investigations--it was all the same to me,” Mrs. Putin said. “Of course, now I understand the difference.”

The couple married in 1983, as Putin was studying for a foreign intelligence assignment with the KGB. It was well known that, for security reasons, foreign postings were available only to married agents, and there has been speculation that Putin was under pressure to find a spouse.

In 1985, the couple moved to Dresden, in what was then East Germany. Their first daughter, Masha, was born the same year, and a second daughter, Katya, was born a year later. The girls, now 15 and 13, attended a German-language school in Moscow until their father became acting president. Since then, they’ve been tutored at home.

Mrs. Putin has said her main job is to care for her daughters. Still, she told the biographers, she doesn’t mind attending receptions as long as she has someone to talk to, especially if she gets to wear nice clothes.

“Women always like to dress up,” she said. “As for politics, it has never interested me at all. It’s boring.”

Mrs. Putin has had her share of hardship. For the first years of her marriage, she shared a tiny two-room apartment with her in-laws. In 1994, she was seriously injured in a car accident, suffering a fractured skull and vertebrae, and underwent two years of rehabilitation. And in 1996, a new house that had taken six years to build burned to the ground just months after they moved in. Like most Russians, the Putins had no insurance.

Despite her higher education, Mrs. Putin seems to have a tendency to use slightly earthy language--a habit also shared by her husband. Some have speculated that she may be uncomfortable speaking publicly. In her five public appearances--opera with the Blairs, New Year’s Eve with her husband in Chechnya, the funeral of her husband’s former boss Anatoly A. Sobchak, skiing in February and voting with her husband March 26--she has kept silent.

It remains to be seen whether that will remain the case after the inauguration. But there is little sign that she intends to take cues from Western counterparts such as Hillary Rodham Clinton or Cherie Blair.

“Ludmila Alexandrovna Putina is not going to play any role in the presidential staff,” Timakova said. “She doesn’t and is not going to have an office in the Kremlin, nor does she have a press secretary.”

The presidential press service will provide any necessary information about her participation in public events, Timakova said, “if such an occasion arises.”