Emmanuel Macron has met with Saida Mirziyoyeva, the influential daughter of Uzbekistan’s president, whose rapid rise through her country’s political ranks has drawn comparisons with Ivanka Trump’s role during her father’s time in the White House.
The French president, wearing aviator sunglasses, welcomed Mirziyoyeva, the eldest daughter of Uzbek leader Shavkat Mirziyoyev, during her visit to Paris.
Mirziyoyeva, a mother of three with more than 2.5 million Instagram followers, met Macron at the Elysee Palace on Tuesday for talks focused on strengthening ties between France and Uzbekistan.
The 41-year-old currently heads the Presidential Administration of Uzbekistan, the Central Asian nation that was formerly part of the Soviet Union.
“I am grateful to President of France Emmanuel Macron for the warm welcome and kind reception,” Mirziyoyeva said in a post on Telegram. “I conveyed the warmest wishes from the President of Uzbekistan.”
She said the two countries share a “long-standing partnership” in several strategic fields, adding that she was confident further joint projects and initiatives would follow to the benefit of both nations.
Mirziyoyeva has previously crossed paths with Ivanka Trump, meeting her at the 2020 Global Women’s Forum in Dubai, where they appeared alongside International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva.
A law graduate who later became a key figure in government communications, Mirziyoyeva entered her father’s administration in 2019 and rose swiftly. By 2023, she had secured one of the most powerful positions in Uzbekistan before taking on the country’s top administrative role in June last year.
Emmanuel Macron donned a pair of aviator shades as he was dazzled by the radiant Saida Mirziyoyeva, the eldest daughter of Uzbekistan’s leader, Shavkat Mirziyoyev
The nepo baby, who counts more than 2.5 million followers on Instagram, met Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris to discuss expanding France-Uzbekistan relations
She is married to entrepreneur Oybek Tursunov, whose father is a senior figure in Uzbekistan’s State Security Service.
She trades on a polished online image, posting about gender equality, women’s rights, and family life to her millions of followers.
Analysts have named her a likely successor to her 68-year-old father, who can stay in power until 2037 under reworked term limits, a managed father-to-daughter handover of the kind seen elsewhere in Central Asia.
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Macron was infamously slapped by his wife Brigitte in May last year while the pair were getting off a plane in Vietnam.
At the time, Macron insisted the incident was ‘nothing’, and said he was just ‘bickering, or rather joking, with my wife’.
But a French journalist earlier this year published a book which claimed Brigitte was furious after seeing a message on his phone from an Iranian actress.
Florian Tardif told RTL radio: ”What happened is that she [Brigitte Macron], saw a message from a well-known figure. An Iranian actress.’
He claims that Macron maintained a ‘platonic’ relationship with the acclaimed star ‘for a few months’, but sent her ‘messages that went quite far’, such as: ‘I find you very pretty.’
Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin, left, and Mirziyoyeva, head of the Uzbek Presidential Administration, pose at the Kuksaroy Presidential Palace in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on June 16
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‘That’s what I’ve been told by those close to him, and that’s what I’m saying this morning,’ Tardif said, insisting he has ‘verified’ the story and that everything in his book is based on ‘facts’.
Brigitte Macron’s representatives denied the slap was linked to the Iranian actress and further emphasized that the First Lady would never check her husband’s phone.
‘Brigitte Macron categorically denied this account directly to the author on March 5, specifying that she never looks at her husband’s mobile phone,’ the president’s entourage said, adding that this detail had not been published by the author.
