Exclusive: Putin’s gymnast ‘lover’ admits he is her ‘ideal man’

This is the moment Vladimir Putin ‘s gymnast ‘lover’ admits in a TV interview he is her ‘ideal man’ – as new photographs show the luxury forest estate where she reportedly lives with their secret children. Alina Kabaeva (pictured left), 39, is said to live with the Russian president at a secret forest palace guarded by the elite FSO security service in Valdai – 250 miles north west of Moscow. The pair have never acknowledged a relationship, but are suspected to have at least two children together.

Fifteen years ago this month she was interviewed on TV by schoolchildren and while not mentioning him by name – as the dictator has never to this day permitted her to – it is now clear beyond all doubt that he was then, as he still is now, the man in her life. She gave some revealing insights. At the time, she was a coquettish 24-year-old, seen at the time as Russia’s most eligible woman, and Putin, now 70 and inflicting a cruel and bloody war on Europe, was 55. Asked if she had her met her ‘ideal man,’ she giggled: ‘I have.’

Her young audience asked her: ‘You said you had a boyfriend? Why aren’t you in a rush to marry him, are you afraid of happiness? Who is he?’ ‘So you’ve managed to ask this question, well done you,’ she laughed. ‘As for being scared of happiness, sometimes I am so happy I am scared to be that happy. Of course there are some concerns…’ ‘And who [is he]?’, another asked. ‘A man, a very good man, a great man,’ she replied, fidgeting uneasily with a pen. ‘I love him very much.’ She replied to another question that her last gift to him had been ‘an Alaska coat, a coat with fur, very beautiful.’ Putin was soon seen in such a coat. Pictured: Undated image of Alina Kabaeva and Vladimir Putin at an event in Kremlin.

Kabaeva was asked whether she would be able to ‘take a husband away from a family’ – and at the time Putin was married to former air stewardess Lyudmila, now 65. She started by saying ‘I think not,’ but immediately qualified her answer. ‘Let me comment,’ she demanded. ‘Life is complicated, and speaking about a married man. If there are issues in a family and a man is looking at another woman, and is communicating with another woman and not with his wife, it means the problem has already happened, and there wouldn’t be anything good in this family.’

In retrospect, this is likely one of several moments over the 15 years she has been romantically linked to Putin that Kabaeva – now seen by all as Russia’s ‘uncrowned tsarina’ – has tried to ‘come out’ and reveal herself as the younger woman in his life.

The former KGB spy may have come close to doing this, but then held back, and the official Kremlin line 15 years later is still to deny any relationship with the gymnast, and to say that the private life of the president, divorced from Lyudmila five years after Kabaeva’s TV interview with those children, is strictly off-limits. Yet a slew of remarkable investigations by opposition and independent Russian journalists have revealed her clear role in Putin’s life, showing her knee-deep in the web of corruption that surrounds his rule.

Want more stories like this from the Daily Mail? Visit our profile page here and hit the follow button above for more of the news you need.