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The long-term partner of Russian president Vladimir Putin has fled to her luxury Swiss property close to Lake Lugano and taken the pair's four young children as war with Ukraine rages. Each of Putin and girlfriend Alina Kabaeva's children have Swiss citizenship, a nation favoured by Russian oligarchs as a place to hide their money thanks to its banking security laws. The couple are said to have seven-year-old twin daughters, who were born in the Swiss city of Lugano and are believed to also have two boys, although their existence have never been formally confirmed.
In , Putin reportedly said: "I have a private life in which I do not permit interference. It must be respected, I have always reacted negatively to those who with their snotty noses and erotic fantasies prowl into others' lives". His obsession with privacy led to Russian newspaper the Moskovsky Korrespondent being shut down in , after it ran a story reporting Putin had divorced his former flight attendant wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva, with whom he has two grown-up children, and was now living with Kabaeva.
Putin and Lyudmila's children Katerina Tikhonova, 35, and Maria Vorontsova, 36, both attended schools under fake names and now enjoy an almost unimaginable life of luxury. The Russian president's current girlfriend is Kabaeva is a year-old former Olympic gold-medal winning athlete, who is one of the most decorated gymnasts in rhythmic gymnastic history with 14 World Championship medals and 21 European Championship medals.
As Putin and Kabaeva's relationship developed, she stepped back from the public eye and is almost never heard from, instead, living a life of total anonymity. Recently, a source in Lugano, close to the Italian border, said: "Before the Coronavirus pandemic there was often gossip about Putin's mistress being in town.
