For Over 50 Years, Patriarch Kirill Has Been Accompanied by a Secret Wife, Proekt Media

For more than 50 years, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church (Vladimir Gundyayev) has been accompanied by Lydia Leonova, who lives in his apartment and travels overseas with the patriarch. Propagandist Solovyov referred to her as the patriarch's second cousin, but this is not accurate, according to an analysis by Proekt.

The agency briefly outlines this. It is known that she spent nine days with Kirill in Baku, where he marked the anniversary of his enthronement, and has not made public appearances since 2019.

Leonova's name first appeared in the press in 2012 when a scandal erupted around the patriarch's elite apartment in Moscow near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, in a building facing the temple. The neighbor on the lower floor, former Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko, began renovations that damaged the patriarchal property with construction dust. Ultimately, a lawsuit was filed against Shevchenko, not by the patriarch, but by Leonova.

Canonical law prohibits the patriarch from marrying. At that time, preacher Solovyov reported that the patriarch allegedly told him he had never lived in the apartment given to him by the authorities for even a week and that "his second cousins"—Leonova and another woman—have lived there permanently.

However, the biographies of the patriarch and Leonova show that they are not related. According to Proekt, in 1971, Leonova married Ukrainian Mikhail Leonov. However, the marriage was likely dissolved within a few years. Her subsequent fate is almost unknown. It is only known that when Gundyayev was sent for service in Smolensk in 1984, she followed him. Leonova has a family business called "Vladolid" (likely a combination of Vladimir and Lydia), several apartments, plots of land, cars, and a summer house in the village of Sivkovo, opposite the Patriot Park in the Moscow region.