Vladimir Putin has grounded his eldest daughter, preventing her from travelling abroad amid fears she did not intend to return to Russia, a report has claimed.
Scientist Dr Maria Vorontsova wanted to fly to a “friendly” country for a tropical beach vacation to mark her 37th birthday next week, it is claimed.
She planned a romantic getaway with Yevgeny Nagorny, 33, her partner since the break-up of her marriage to the Dutch son of a NATO colonel, according to the General SVR Telegram channel.
“Putin responded with a categorical refusal, strengthening the security protection of Maria,” said the report on the Russian outlet.
“According to our information, the president’s eldest daughter did not plan to return to Russia.”
The report did not say if the reason for her alleged plan to abscond was her father’s bloody war in Ukraine.
Maria – who has been sanctioned by Western countries due to her family links to Putin – has a half-Dutch son, now eight, by her ex-husband Jorrit Faassen.
She is now banned from travel to major Western countries but was previously fond of going to Europe.
Pictures show Maria and Nagorny attending a friend’s wedding near Salerno, Italy, in 2019.
She appeared at the time to be pregnant.
The Telegram channel claims to hold inside knowledge of the Kremlin, and was the first to report Putin is suffering serious illnesses including cancer, a theory now regarded as plausible.
Maria is Putin’s daughter by his ex-wife Lyudmila, the former Russian first lady.
Born when the Russian president was a KGB spy, she is an expert in rare genetic diseases in children.
She is a leading researcher at the National Medical Research Center for Endocrinology at the Ministry of Health of Russia. She is also an expert on dwarfism.
Maria’s boyfriend was a Kremlin foe under Putin’s repressive laws before apparently turning loyalist after he met her.
He walked into a $158,000-a-year job and was installed in a luxury high security home with three bedrooms, four bathrooms, a pantry, a library, a wood-burning fireplace, a private terrace, “alpine-level air purification” and “spring-level water filtration, according to an investigation by independent media outlets Meduza and Nastoyashchee Vremya.
He studied at the unfashionable customs department of the Moscow University of Finance and Law.
He later worked for a customs broker and a fertiliser company, and appeared anti-Putin, being “interested in the opposition agenda”.
Maria’s ex-husband worked long term in Russia at Gazprombank-Invest and Stroytransgaz.
Her divorced sister Katerina, deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems at Moscow State University, is likewise from Putin’s former marriage to former Kremlin first lady Lyudmila.
Their half sister is Luiza Rozova, a 19-year-old heiress also known as Elizaveta Krivonogikh, from a previous relationship with cleaner-turned-multi-millionaire Svetlana Krivonogikh, 45, now a part-owner of a major Russian bank.
All three Putin daughters have remained silent on the war with Ukraine, and their opinion on the conflict is not known.
Putin, 69, was once told by a BBC Russia reporter that it was an “open secret” that Maria and Katerina were his children, but he declined to confirm them as his daughters.
Speculation that he has a family with rhythmic gymnast turned media mogul Alina Kabaeva, 38, have been met with official denials, but the rumours persist.
Putin has previously said: “I have a private life in which I do not permit interference. It must be respected.”
He deplored “those who with their snotty noses and erotic fantasies prowl into others’ lives”.
Kabaeva is on record as saying she had met a man who “I love very much”, gushing: “Sometimes you feel so happy that you even feel scared.”
