Very little is known about Vladimir Putin‘s personal life, while even less is known about the 96-year-old woman in Georgia who is claiming to be the Russian president’s estranged mother. 

Vera Putina, as she names herself, is claiming to be Putin‘s biological mother, suggesting that she left him in Russia with his grandmother when he was a child.

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“He went to school in Georgia until the third grade and then in Russia he repeated a couple of grades,” Putina claimed. 

“My husband didn’t want him here and I was afraid I would have to support him. I took him to Russia and left him there with my mother. He walked like a duck.” 

The Kremlin denies Vera Putina’s story

As has become customary in recent times, the Kremlin moved to deny the story, describing the tale told by Putina as a “crazy story”. 

The story isn’t actually a new one, as Putina has been claiming Vladimir Putin as her son since 1999, which was before he became president of Russia and long before the current invasion of Ukraine. When she spotted Putin on TV, after he had become a KGB agent, she started to make the claims, although these have never been confirmed. 

What is also yet to be confirmed is just how a number of journalists who tried to interview the old woman have since died in strange circumstances.

According to those journalists, Putin was born in 1950 and was sent to live in Russia at the age of nine, however his grandfather on his mother’s side sent him to an orphanage. 

Putin has famously kept his private life very secret, with his two daughters even being given fake names. He is believed to have a girlfriend in Alina Kabaeva, but that story has also been played down by the Kremlin.