Is missing Putin a new dad?
RUMOURS continue to swirl this weekend over the whereabouts of Vladimir Putin, with one newspaper claiming that the Russian president had fathered a child with his longterm girlfriend.
According to a Swiss tabloid, Putin had flown to Switzerland to be with Alina Kabaeva, his rumoured lover, as she went into labour at a private clinic that is popular with wealthy Russians.
The reports that Kabaeva, an Olympic gymnast-turned-parliamentarian, checked into the clinic earlier this week could not be confirmed and the Kremlin denied that she had given birth.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, told Russian Forbes magazine that “information about the birth of a baby fathered by Vladimir Putin does not correspond to reality”.
Kabaeva, 31, has been rumoured to be in a relationship with Putin for years, but the Kremlin has never acknowl- edged any link between them.
In 2008, a Russian tabloid newspaper was closed down by its owner after it ran a story on the rumoured relationship.
Putin divorced Lyudmilla, his wife of 30 years, in 2013.
Yesterday’s reports were the latest in a series of rumours to circulate since Putin, 62, can- celled a trip to Kazakhstan on Wednesday.
The cancellation raised eyebrows when a Kazakh official said the trip had been called off because Putin had “fallen ill”. There were even claims that Putin had lost his grip on power and that a coup was taking place.
Reporters last saw Putin when he met Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on March 5. Photographs of Putin meeting officials one-on-one have been put on the Kremlin website since then, but his gathering with a group of women for International Women’s Day on March 8 actually took place three days earlier, according to one participant.
Peskov’s denials have done little to quell a glut of internet satire directed at the opacity of high politics in Russia.
In one comment, a Russian internet user applied the principles of Kremlinology to conclude: “Putin cannot be dead. It is not in Putin’s interests.” — ©