The third legal wife of the famous Russian rocker Vladimir Kuzmin was Ekaterina Trofimova. She is 27 years younger than her husband. When they got together, many predicted that it would not last long, because the man was fit to be a father. But the years passed, and the couple continued to live together. In 2020, Vladimir and Ekaterina announced their divorce by posting a joint photo. The biography of Katya Trofimova begins in 1982 in Tatarstan, the city of Elabuga. The girl has been interested in acting since childhood. Growing up, I became interested in economics. She studied foreign languages and graduated from MESI in Moscow.
Katya is a beautiful girl. Tall, weight no more than 50 kg, long golden brown hair. She never complained about the lack of fans. But she was always distinguished by her seriousness and prudence. It is not surprising that she chose a man much older than herself.
Vladimir Kuzmin: biography and personal life, children
The future singer was born in 1955 in the family of a Marine. Parents did not stay in one place for a long time, given the specific nature of their father’s work.
Vladimir studied at a regular school and was distinguished by good academic performance. The love for music appeared in childhood. By the age of 5, Vladimir was good at playing the electric guitar, and at 6 he wrote his first song. He attended music school, where he studied violin.
Kuzmin's career began in 1977, when, after graduating from music school, he became a guitarist for the VIA Nadezhda. After 2 years he created the group “Carnival”. Subsequently she became widely famous.
From 1982 to 1985, Vladimir played in the group "Dynamic". Then he collaborated with Alla Pugacheva. He wrote songs for the pop star and performed at her Recital Theater.
In 1991, Vladimir, together with the new lineup of the group "Dynamic", went to the USA, where he played in nightclubs. A year later he returned to his homeland, continuing his musical career.
Tatyana Artemyeva - Kuzmin's first wife
The musician was married three times. The first wife was Tatyana Artemyeva, a talented poetess. Over the 9 years of marriage, the woman gave Vladimir three children: Lisa, Stepan, Sophia, as well as many hits written in collaboration.
Tatyana also has an illegitimate son, Nikita, whom Kuzmin officially adopted.
Artemyeva was born in Moscow, graduated from the Institute of History and Archives. I met Kuzmin by chance on the street. He noticed a beautiful girl, approached, and started talking. The wedding took place a year later.
After 9 years of marriage, the family broke up due to the singer’s constant infidelities. Artemyeva accuses Alla Pugacheva of stealing her husband.
Today, the ex-wife continues to be active in literary activity, giving preference to philosophy and esotericism.
What songs did ex-wife Kuzmina write and what did she tell on NTV in “The Stars Aligned”
Speaking on the program, Tatyana admitted that she was responsible for many of the musician’s hits. The poetess wrote poems for the songs:
- My love;
- When you call me;
- Voice;
- Do not leave;
- Golden Carousel;
- Walls;
- Just yesterday;
- Fire, etc.
She said that Vladimir was a talented person, but at the same time a pathological womanizer. The children loved him, so his wife turned a blind eye to his numerous infidelities. Over time, the marriage went from full-fledged to guest marriage. Vladimir periodically appeared at home, communicated with his children and wife, then disappeared.
After Kuzmin got along with Pugacheva, she began to threaten the poetess with divorce. Under the influence of the Prima Donna, the marriage broke up.
Tatyana is very attractive. This can be seen if you look at photos of her youth.
Reunion of Vladimir Kuzmin and Ekaterina Trofimova
With his new muse Svetlana, Kuzmin went on river cruises more than once. But this summer he sailed on a yacht in the company of old friends, without Sveta. And the page of Kuzmin’s beloved with their shared photos suddenly disappeared from social networks. We haven't heard anything about Svetlana Karpukhina lately.
The other day, on his Instagram, Vladimir Kuzmin published a fresh photo with his ex-wife Ekaterina. “Something like this,” the musician wrote in the explanation of the photo. Katya posted a similar photo on her page.
“Vladimir, this is not “somehow”, these are tears of joy in our eyes,” “everything new is well forgotten old,” the fans instantly responded.
Subject:
- Vladimir Kuzmin
- Ekaterina Trofimova
Kuzmin's American wife - Kelly Curzon
At the peak of his fame, the singer made an unexpected decision - to leave for America. He took his younger brother and several other musicians with him. There the guys worked their butts off, performing every day in nightclubs in California.
In America, Kuzmin fell in love again. His chosen one was Kelly Curzon. It was fast, passionate love. When Kuzmin decided to return to his homeland, the girl followed him. They got married in Moscow.
But the marriage did not last long. Kelly's father was categorically against his daughter's relationship with Kuzmin. He was still able to separate the couple by threatening to disinherit Curzon.
Former wife of Vladimir Kuzmin - Vera Sotnikova
The singer's next love is a famous actress. In the 1990s, Vera Sotnikova was considered one of the first beauties, and even now she has an outstanding appearance (compare photos in her youth).
Together with Vera Kuzmina, he lived in a civil marriage for 7 years. The woman stole Vladimir from Alla Pugacheva herself. Although the actress did not take their romance seriously. “If I believed that the Diva and Volodya had something, I would not have gotten involved,” said Sotnikova.
The union between Vladimir and Vera lasted seven years. To this day, the woman remembers this period with warmth. Relations developed rapidly. Sotnikova even cherished thoughts of marriage, but freedom turned out to be more important to her.
“Vladimir Kuzmin is a closed, secretive person. He might have forgotten to wish me a happy birthday, but there was no point in being offended. And he is completely unsuited to family life. The entire household was entirely my responsibility. Only once I asked him to throw out the trash, but he managed to injure his hands on the glass. At the same time, Kuzmin is a great romantic. He constantly talked about his love, wrote poems that I still keep,” Vera Sotnikova said about her civil marriage with the singer.
They decided to separate on mutual initiative. Everyone was a creative person, and put work first, not family. Kuzmin and Vera had such busy schedules that they practically stopped seeing each other. So the girl packed her things and simply moved.
Ekaterina Trofimova: “I don’t associate professional activities with the word “comfort”
— It was an interesting offer from one of the largest Russian banks. In the Paris office of S&P, I specialized in the Russian financial market, so by the time I was invited from Gazprombank, I perfectly understood the size of the company and what kind of corporate culture it represented, I knew the team well personally and was never subsequently disappointed. My first “project” there was the creation of a unified analytical “Center for Economic Forecasting” to provide banking divisions with analytics and forecasts for internal needs and work with clients.
— Have the skills from an international company come in handy in a large state-owned bank, where people have a different way of thinking and management processes are structured differently?
— I wouldn’t say that people in Russian companies have some radically different way of thinking. Still, many of my colleagues managed to work both in the West and in the East, and, given the processes of globalization, the professional culture in Russia is rapidly changing. And the corporate culture of a single company will always be different from others, and you will have to adapt to it. But if we talk about specific examples, it seems to me that the main thing that we can use, for example, from Western experience, is the standardization of procedures, which allows us to increase the operational efficiency of the company.
— The very idea of creating ACRA (Analytical Credit Rating Agency. - Forbes Woman
) some market participants associate it with a sharp decline in Russia’s rating by three international agencies at the beginning of 2020 and accusing them of being biased against our country. Isn't it offensive to hear this?
There are moments in your career when you intuitively understand that you are taking a step that can change not only you, but also an entire area of life, society, and the economy. This does not happen to everyone and generally happens very rarely.
ACRA is just the case when there is a real chance to change the landscape of the rating industry in Russia for the better, to move it to a fundamentally new qualitative level. This issue has been brewing for a long time, and individual events in macroeconomics and geopolitics were only its catalyst. In addition, the reform of the rating market coincided with similar changes occurring in the developed countries of the EU and the USA, and we now meet the best global standards for rating market regulation. The only thing that could stop me was the understanding that the project concept was ineffective, or even the slightest hint of a conflict of interest or an attack on the independence of the agency.
— Why do you think the process of creating such an institution was not initiated in Russia earlier?
— Regulation of the rating market cannot appear out of nowhere; for this there must be objective prerequisites - a certain degree of development of the financial market, the competence of the regulator, a request from investors for a more detailed assessment of credit risk within the country. In addition, the situation observed in the market with the dominance and use of ratings by the “Big Three” international agencies suited the majority.
The deterioration of the macroeconomic situation led to a serious compression of ratings assigned on an international scale, which, in turn, led to the impossibility of differentiating companies and banks with different levels of risk. This is very important for the regulator and institutional investors. Therefore, the need arose for the use of credit ratings assigned on a national scale for regulatory purposes, and for the corresponding reform of the market as a whole.
In Russia they did not reinvent the wheel. If, for example, we want to assign ratings in Europe, we must create a subsidiary there, a full complement of staff and obtain a license in the local market. Only in this case will our ratings be recognized in Europe. After the adoption of the Federal Law “On the Activities of Credit Rating Agencies in the Russian Federation,” all agencies wishing to work with Russian clients found themselves in the same situation. We confidently compete with the three largest foreign agencies (Standard & Poor's, Fitch and Moody's). De jure, these companies, having some of their largest businesses in Europe in Russia, are branches of London offices and have not yet announced whether they intend to bring their activities into compliance with Russian laws.
— You started a large-scale country-wide project from scratch. What feelings did you experience when you agreed and realized this fact?
— Most of all, I felt responsibility, and, in my opinion, this feeling is much stronger than fear. More precisely, it simply does not leave a chance for fear to appear. I was responsible for the entire project to create a completely new player in the financial market with such large and ambitious goals, and for the shareholders who believed in this project, and for the board of directors, consisting of international-level professionals and with enormous experience in the rating field, who did not hesitate to accept the invitation to participate and share their experiences.
Currently, the ACRA team has just over 40 people, and this is a completely formed structure with well-established processes. In less than a year since the creation of the agency, we were able to make a big leap, an important stage of which was our recognition by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and being the first to be included in the register of credit rating agencies. And the feeling that I feel at the moment is the desire to show the agency in action, because right now, having received accreditation, we have the opportunity to assign ratings, that is, to produce the product for which we were created.
— Explain the goals of creating a national rating agency and its concept. Are you going to go beyond serving Russian companies and compete with the Big Three in terms of not only Russian clients?
— The main goal of creating ACRA is to provide investors with a high-quality independent analytical product showing the level of credit risk of issuers and financial instruments in different sectors of the economy. Of course, our primary task is to develop the product in Russia. We place our main emphasis on this, concentrating the team’s competence on the Russian market. This coincides with the needs of investors and logically fits into the development strategy of the Russian financial market as a whole.
After all, the degree of development of our financial market is such that it becomes strange when the rating industry lags behind the financial industry.
For comparison: in the not very developed country of Bangladesh there are about 7,000–10,000 credit ratings, and in Russia today there are no more than 500–600. At the same time, no matter how intensively the Russian market develops, its capacity is limited, and at some point we will hit the ceiling of possibilities. Therefore, of course, the international market is included in our plans.
— What do you feel if you cannot find a compromise or advance your decision - powerlessness or, on the contrary, double determination to win everyone?
- Of course, I never give up, otherwise what kind of leader would I be? But the question is what methods to achieve victory. Going ahead with a banner in your hands and against everything, including windmills, is not exactly my model of behavior. If you like, in business I am more of a diplomat. I believe that everything can be achieved calmly, confidently and without losing dignity. However, this should not be confused with inaction or excessive caution - when, as the famous Latin proverb says, “delay is like death” and the moment to act comes, you need to take it and do it. The task of a good leader and manager is to see and use this moment.
— However, in mid-2020, at a meeting of the Central Bank, when the concept of creating an agency was discussed, you very persistently defended its name in a room where more than 50 of the most influential men in the Russian financial sector were present.
My team and I came up with the name of the agency together, went through many options, but settled on the laconic ACRA. Yes, the first reaction at that very meeting was, if not negative, then sincerely surprised. For such a project, they expected some kind of loud name and necessarily related to Russian themes. But it took me no more than half an hour for the audience to agree. ACRA is consonant with the Greek word meaning upper or highest degree. It is from this word that the name “Acropolis” comes, and it is by the highest standards that we are guided in our daily work. With this name, we were in first place in the list of more than 100 rating agencies in the world in alphabetical order. According to all marketing rules, the name must be balanced in the number of vowels and consonants (we have an equal number of them), it is desirable that the name be looped (for us it is A and A) and that the letters are close in alphabet. And for skeptics, the story worked: in 1982, the ancient city of Acre was discovered in Crimea, now submerged in sea waters. This summer, the Russian Geographical Society organized an archaeological expedition to examine it.
— Do you remember your first leadership appointment? What are the internal feelings that “I am responsible for the team and solving important issues”, how do they differ from the current impressions before the start of a new activity on a country scale?
- You know, I believe that even the smallest things have a big impact. I felt my responsibility, both assigning ratings, being an analyst at an international rating agency, and organizing the work of my departments in the bank, and, of course, I still feel it now. Probably, if it were otherwise, I would not have been trusted to lead the project to create ACRA, because in addition to my experience, I brought my reputation to the project. It’s just that the nature of the work of an agency manager is different from my previous tasks, new responsibilities have been added, and I have to delve into topics and nuances that I simply never had to deal with before: purchasing office furniture, replacing light bulbs and choosing a catering company for a presentation.
— Has your daily routine changed since moving to ACRA?
— I still try to start my day with exercise, then work in the office or go to meetings and finish my work day quite late. In this mode, sports are simply necessary for me. Even when going on a business trip, I always try to take sportswear with me and, if the hotel has a gym or swimming pool, I will definitely start my day there, no matter how early I have to get up. At some point I realized that I simply couldn’t handle the workload if I didn’t get enough physical exercise. I don’t set great sporting goals; it doesn’t even really matter to me what sport I do. Often it is while moving or listening to classical music that I think especially well. When I run, for example skiing, I always keep a notepad and pen in my pocket. Or at least I write down my thoughts on my phone. But in the pool it’s not so convenient, you can’t take a notepad with you, and I usually swim for an hour and a half without a break.
— How effective do you think it is for continuing your career to get out of that very comfort zone that sooner or later arises in your current activity?
— I don’t consider solving new problems or mastering a new business a way out of my comfort zone. I admit, I’m not at all used to associating my professional activity with the word “comfort” and I don’t understand why you should consciously build yourself some kind of speculative obstacles in order to overcome them later. Comfort is when you drink tea in a warm, cozy apartment or when you fly first class on a plane. And work is interest, drive, movement! So, in my opinion, as soon as you start to feel “comfortable” at work, get up and go do things, overcome stagnation. I live by the principle: the best rest is a change of activity.
— What do you think a woman can do better to advance her career? What can she rely on other than the personal help of third parties?
“The best thing a woman who wants to build a career can do is become a true expert in her field and work from the heart and with pleasure, without setting herself the task of “making a career.”
The last wife of Vladimir Kuzmin is Katya Trofimova
The singer met her when he turned 45 years old. And in 1999, the rock star was vacationing at the Black Sea resort of Anapa. Kuzmin was sitting with friends in a cafe on the embankment, having fun, walking and signing autographs to numerous fans who came up to his table in a line. Catherine was one of them. Kuzmin immediately singled her out from the rest. She has beautiful looks and an amazing figure. He asked to join him. But the beauty refused, saying that an artist was waiting on the beach to paint her portrait.
Kuzmin, not used to giving up quickly, followed the girl. He stood and watched the artist paint the portrait, and then asked for a copy for himself. He also asked when Katya would come for the finished portrait.
At the appointed hour, Vladimir was already waiting for the girl on the embankment. When she arrived, I spoke to her and asked for her phone number. This is how communication began.
The more often Kuzmin was with young Katya upon returning to Moscow, the more confident he became that this was serious. But Vladimir’s friends and older children were not too happy for him. The difference between the lovers is as much as 27 years. And Kuzmin was firmly convinced that he wanted to get married.
The girl’s parents did not object to the marriage, although, as the bride’s father later admitted, they were somewhat dumbfounded.
The wedding took place in one of the luxurious casinos in the Moscow region. Celebrities, businessmen, and politicians attended the celebration. And a peaceful and happy family life began.
According to Kuzmin, they have a lot in common: they love the same music, books, walking, and playing sports. Vladimir taught his new wife to ride a motorcycle, and at night the two of them rode on the highway.
The strengthening of relations was also facilitated by the fact that Ekaterina managed to get along with Kuzmin’s children. She supported her husband when his father died, then his eldest daughter and son tragically died.
Why Kuzmin is divorcing his wife
In the summer of 2020, Vladimir published information on Twitter about the dissolution of his marriage with young Katerina after 17 years of marriage. There have long been rumors that not all is well with the 63-year-old singer and his 36-year-old wife. Katya tried more than once to leave Kuzmin. And after every quarrel he drowned his grief with alcohol.
The artist announced: “Katya and I broke up, but we continue to deeply respect and love each other and remain close friends.”
Divorce of Kuzmin and Trofimova
In the summer of 2020, Vladimir published information on Twitter about the dissolution of his marriage with young Katerina after 17 years of marriage. There have long been rumors that not all is well with the 63-year-old singer and his 36-year-old wife. Katya tried more than once to leave Kuzmin. And after every quarrel he drowned his grief with alcohol. The artist announced:
“Katya and I broke up, but we continue to deeply respect and love each other and remain close friends.”
Since then, Svetlana Karpukhina, a 27-year-old yachtswoman from Kaliningrad, has been seen next to the singer. Svetlana is 36 years younger than Kuzmin. The musician gave her a yacht with the telling name “Pretty Woman” (after the name of his old hit). It was assumed that because of her, Vladimir broke up with his wife.
