A WOMAN who claimed to be Vladimir Putin’s real mum has died aged 97, it emerged yesterday.
Vera Putina, who died in poverty in Metekhi in the former Soviet state of Georgia, insisted for decades that the Russian autocrat was her son, who she had sent away from home at 10 so he could escape her brutal husband, his stepfather.
Vera, a retired engineer, claimed that she gave birth in 1950 to the boy she called Vova after an affair with a married man. She later married but a few years later sent her son to live with his grandparents in Russia.
When she first came forward with her claims – totally rejected by Putin – in 1999 she produced pictures of her son, who bore a striking resemblance to the now 70-year-old dictator.
Read more: Putin’s ‘real mother’ told of his troubled childhood
She believed her parents had given the boy to the couple acknowledged as Putin’s parents, Vladimir Putin Snr and Maria Shelomova.
The Sun reported that she spoke shortly before his death of her heartbreak that he would not admit that she was his mother.
Sources in Georgia confirmed that Vera died of old age in the capital Tbilisi and was buried in her native Metekhi on Tuesday.
Although Putin rejected her claims, details about his youth are sketchy. And records from the archives of Metekhi’s closest town, Caspi, show a Vladimir Putin was registered at Metekhi school from 1959 to 1960.
Putin’s official version of his childhood is that he was born in 1952 in Leningrad – now St Petersburg – and was the third son of Vladimir and Maria.
Vera told The Sun in one of her last interviews: “My dream is not to die without Vova seeing me and talking to me at least once. I often see him in my dreams, but he doesn’t want to talk to me. Both in life and in dreams, he is upset about what I did, he cannot forgive me.”
Vera added that her son became cold-hearted and introverted because of his stepfather’s treatment of him, and turned to abusing animals.
She said: “Vova was a quiet boy, a thoughtful little kid. I still keep the sling he made to shoot at neighbours’ chickens. Despite being quiet, he was very competitive and short-tempered, he couldn’t stand anyone from his peers being better than him.”
Vera added that at one point she fled her marital home with Vladimir to her parents’ home in Russia, but later reconciled with her husband.
She said: “I returned, but without Vova. My parents did not want to give him back.
“That’s the last I saw my boy. This will be my biggest regret till the day I die, that I let my little boy be taken from my arms.”
The authorities in Moscow insist the black and white photo Vera treasured of her son at seven is not the Russian president.
Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman, dismissed the claims. He said: “The story is not true. It does not correspond to reality at all.”