Vladimir Zakhmatov was born on 17 February 1954 in the village of Makhalino, Kuznetskiy district, Penza region, Soviet Russia, in the family of public servants. His mother, Lyubov Mikhaylina-Breguet, was a doctor (descendant of Swiss watchmakers, founders of the "Breguet" company; her ancestors moved to Russia in 1860); and his father, Dmitri Zakhmatov, was an economist. Both parents volunteered in the World War II: his father served as a trooper from July 1941 (the defense of Kyiv to Berlin attack), and his mother was a nurse in Stalingrad in 1942 to Prague.