In the spring of 2015, Vladimir Putin had just become a father again in his early sixties – three decades after the birth of his second daughter. When the baby was born, the Russian president shouted: "Hurrah!" Finally a boy!".

Putin's son Ivan, now nine, is the first of the Russian president's two children by his longtime girlfriend, former Olympic rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva. Four years later, in 2019, Kabaeva gave birth to her second son, Vladimir Junior, who is now five years old.

The revelation this week that Putin, 71, is enjoying a new period of fatherhood offers a glimpse into his world of secrecy and privilege. It hints at the psychology of a man whose career is full of professional shrewdness with which he spices up his every move.

The existence of Putin's sons was discovered on the Russian research site File Center by a family member who cares for the brothers at Putin's isolated residence in Valdai, on a lake halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Putin's outburst of joy at having a son has become a family story that Ivan tells his teachers and guards over and over again. The file center said it has received dozens of photos of Ivan, but will not release them because he is a minor and not to blame for his parents' actions. However, the details of the children's lives are true, the site claims. And they raise questions about government spending on their "gold-plated" upbringing.

According to a File Center source, Ivan and Vladimir Junior, or Vanya and Volodya, as many Russians with these names are fondly called, are being looked after by a team of nannies, governesses and sports coaches. They have their own driver and car, yacht and business jet. They travel with special documents to hide their identity, the kind used by… Russian spies.

Longtime lovers

Putin's relationship with Kabaeva, 41, has been rumored for more than two decades, but he has always refused to admit it. The two were pictured beaming at each other at turn-of-the-century formal events.

Asked in 2008 about his relationship with the athlete at a press conference in Sardinia, he replied: "Of course, I am aware of the cliché that politicians live in glass houses, but even in these cases there must be some limits... I never feel they like people who go around with their erotic fantasies and poke their stuffy noses into other people's lives."

In the same year, the newspaper "Moscow Correspondent" was suddenly closed after it reported that Kabaeva and Putin were planning a marriage. But over the years there have been strong indications of a connection between Kabaeva, a gold medalist at the 2004 Athens Olympics, and the former KGB spy.

In 2016, it became clear that Kabaeva's grandmother bought three luxury apartments in St. Petersburg and Moscow from two tycoons close to Putin. The property, believed to be worth millions of dollars, was transferred to Anna Zatsepilina in December 2015, according to an investigation by independent Russian television channel TV Dozhd.

Also in 2016, a Reuters investigation found that Grigoriy Bayevsky, a 47-year-old business partner of an old friend of Putin's, sold or transferred property to four people: a student who posed for a calendar dedicated to the leader for his birthday, Putin's younger daughter and two relatives of Kabaeva. One of Kabaeva's relatives was her sister Leysan. The fourth was Zacepilina.

Rumors about Kabaeva resurfaced in May 2022 when the SonntagsZeitung newspaper reported that she and Putin had two children and that a Russian-Swiss gynecologist had assisted the Olympic champion in her pregnancy, The File Center confirmed this week that the doctor was Natalia Thibault, and Ivan Putin was born at the Santa Anna Clinic in Lugano in Southern Switzerland.

Away from the public eye

Putin's reluctance to acknowledge his relationship with Kabaeva is consistent with a broader effort to cover up his family. Photos of his two daughters were published in the early 2000s, but then they disappeared from public view.

Even after journalists discovered in recent years that they were 39-year-old Maria Vorontsova, an endocrinologist, and 38-year-old Katerina Tikhonova, a businesswoman and acrobatic rock and roll dancer, Putin continued to refrain from identifying them, preferring the phrase "those women" to describe them. describe the sisters.

A daughter Putin allegedly had with a mistress named Svetlana Krivonogikh in 2003 is not recognized by the Kremlin. Putin's desire to protect his family may once have had a rational basis. In the early 2000s, Islamist guerrillas in the North Caucasus carried out devastating terrorist attacks across Russia, and relatives of officials were potential targets for kidnapping.

After Putin's divorce from Vorontsova and Tikhonova's mother, former flight attendant Lyudmila Putina, in 2013, the secrecy seemed increasingly strange — especially in contrast to the public profile of the children of Western leaders such as Chelsea Clinton and Malia and Sasha Obama.

The fake mother

In the case of Kabaeva and the two sons she shares with Putin, the sheer mechanics of the cover-up are intriguing.

The gymnast's cousin, a woman named Olesya Fedina, posed as the boys' mother in communications with nannies and private tutors, the File Center claimed, cited by The Times.

But the trick doesn't work when Ivan Putin participates in ice hockey tournaments. In the end, he runs not to Fedina, but to his real mother Kabaeva, who is hidden in an area surrounded by opaque glass. Ivan and Vladimir Jr. move in with their teachers, rarely see each other with their peers, but enjoy frequent vacations on a boat and skiing.

The boys' entourage used planes and helicopters operated by companies linked to Yuriy Kovalchuk, 73, and Gennady Timchenko, 71, the File Center said. Kovalchuk is a prominent banker and friend of the Russian president, while Timchenko is a billionaire tycoon and one of Putin's ice hockey partners.

Heirs?

Members of Putin's family and the descendants of his friends are increasingly moving towards power and wealth. The sons of his longtime allies hold roles as deputy prime minister and head of Russia's supreme audit body.

Anna Tsivileva, 52, Putin's first cousin, one of the country's ten deputy defense ministers, was promoted to the role of secretary of state last month. In 2017, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project alleged that another Putin relative acted as a proxy for the president's wealth. Mikhail Shelomov amassed a fortune of $573 million while working a job with a salary of about $8.500 a year, the project said.

A year earlier, the Panama Papers leak revealed that Sergei Roldugin, a cellist and Vorontsova's godfather, directly or indirectly owned several companies in tax havens with cash flows of up to $2 billion.

However, the revelation that Putin has two previously unknown sons is likely to have minimal political impact. So far there is no evidence that they or their sisters were raised to inherit it.

"These are not heirs-in-waiting," Mark Galeotti, a Russian political and security expert, told The Times. He adds that the fact that Ivan and Vladimir Jr. were "raised in a safe bubble" is not a "unique approach for the offspring of a tyrant."

Instead, the boy's lifestyle speaks more to Putin's personal desire for secrecy and the structure of his regime: a murky mix of state functions and private initiatives and a princely routine for those at the top.