Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed on Monday that young members of his family are fluent in Mandarin, although he advised schoolchildren to also remember the significance of English despite the increasing popularity of Chinese.
Putin, who has two daughters with his ex-wife Lyudmila and speaks Russian, English, German, and French, rarely discusses his family. However, Russian media reports that he has at least three grandchildren.
During a visit to Secondary School No 20 in Kyzyl, Tuva, approximately 4,500km east of Moscow, Putin mentioned, "Some of my family members, the little ones, speak Chinese too — they speak it fluently."
In light of the expanding relationship between China and Russia, Mandarin has become increasingly popular in Russia as a foreign language, a trend Putin attributes to the developing connections in economics, politics, and society.
Although Putin is fluent in German and has taken lessons to enhance his English, he emphasized the importance of English for pupils, stating, "English is a great language, it has given humanity a great deal in terms of combining knowledge and uniting people in the field of culture, and so on."
According to the 2022 census, Russian, English, Tatar, German, and Chechen are the most widely spoken languages in Russia. While Mandarin is spoken far less, its popularity has been rapidly increasing in recent years as a foreign language.
In May, Putin and China's President Xi Jinping pledged a "new era" of partnership, positioning themselves as rivals to the United States, which they described as an aggressive Cold War hegemon spreading chaos worldwide.
China and Russia announced a "no limits" partnership in February 2022, shortly before Putin's military intervention in Ukraine, marking the deadliest land war in Europe since World War II.
English is the world's most spoken language with about 1.5 billion speakers, followed by Mandarin Chinese with about 1.1 billion speakers, and then Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, French, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, and Urdu, according to Ethnologue, a language research center.
