Russian President Vladimir Putin has two secret sons who are being raised in isolation and luxury, a Russian media report alleges.
The report came from The Dossier Center, an investigative group in Russia, where media is heavily suppressed.
Business Insider was unable to verify the report itself.
It says the children are with Alina Kabaeva, a retired gymnast with whom Putin is long rumored to have had a relationship.
According to the report, the boys’ names are Ivan and Vladimir Jr.
They are said to live in a luxury estate shielded from the public and even contact with other children.
Putin’s long been rumored to have children with Kabaeva, but the report is the first time their identities and details of their lives have been made public.
The Russian president has fiercely guarded details of his private life, but is known to have two daughters with his former wife, Lyudmila Putina.
Though he has never publicly confirmed their identities, they are said to be Maria Vorontsova, a biologist, and Katerina Tikhonova, a businesswoman.
Putin is reported to have started a relationship with Kabaeva after his divorce in 2008.
The Dossier Center report claims that Ivan Putin was born in 2015 in a private clinic in Lugano, Switzerland, while Vladimir Jr was born in 2019 in Moscow.
“On several occasions, Ivan Putin told his tutors and security guards…that when he was born, Vladimir Putin was so happy that he shouted: ‘Hurray! Finally! A boy!'” said the report.
The Dossier Center is run by the exiled Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky and has been publishing explosive stories about Putin and his circle since 2018.
Its latest report said that details of the lives of the children are closely guarded, and that the boys have used “cover documents since infancy, which are mostly made for intelligence officers and people under state protection.”
Sasha Mordovets via Getty Images
“Their dates of birth are known only to their closest relatives.”
They lead isolated lives on Putin’s luxury estate in Valdai, northwest of Moscow, where they are surrounded by tutors, nannies, sports coaches, and security agents, the Dossier Center said.
According to a 2021 report by associates of Alexander Navalny, the Russian dissident who died in suspicious circumstances in January, Valdai is Putin’s “personal favorite” of his properties.
The report says that those visiting the Valdai estate, including children, must isolate for two weeks. Putin himself is reported to have insisted on this measure at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic for those coming into contact with him.
According to the report, the children spend their winters skiing in Sochi, on the Black Sea, where Putin has another vast palace. Their summers are spent on yachts, confined to Russian waters in the wake of the Ukraine war, it said.
“They have to play mostly alone or with adults… They only see their parents late at night, and their peers — mainly during big celebrations,” the Dossier Center wrote.
They are said to have private jets, armored trains, helicopters, or yachts at their disposal.
As with their father, security around them is tight, the Dossier Center reported.
“Like Vladimir Putin, his sons have their own mugs and drink only from them,” it says, while security officials “are always close to the children.”
The investigation claimed to have uncovered posts on a website that offers tutoring services for elite Russians advertising positions teaching the boys.
The ad requests tutors who can teach English and accept that they will be unable to leave the isolated estate where the children live.
The pay would be $8,540 a month, the report said.
South African tutors are preferred because they are seen as less negative toward Russia in the wake of the Ukraine war, the report said.
The report says that the children rarely see Putin, but that he “treats his sons even more reverently than he once did his daughters.”
It said that Putin is “the only one who can speak sternly to them.”
“None of them risk arguing with the children, so the boys are growing up believing they are exceptional. Any whim is fulfilled, and they view all the residences where they live as their personal property,” the report says.
It says that Ivan is a Disney enthusiast and likes to dress up as Disney characters. The Russian president, it says, disapproves and prefers Soviet-era cartoons.
Occasionally, Putin and his elder son play ice hockey together on a special private ice hockey rink on the Valdai estate, the report says.
Putin has been the commanding figure in Russia politics since 2000, and analysts have long speculated about who he may choose to empower as his successor.
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