Vladimir Putin has grounded his eldest daughter from travelling abroad amid sensational fears she doesn't intend to return to Russia, it has been claimed.
Scientist Dr Maria Vorontsova, 36, wanted to fly to a “friendly” country for a tropical beach vacation to mark her 37th birthday next week, it was reported.
She planned a romantic getaway with Yevgeny Nagorny, 33, her partner since the breakup 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,” the report said.
“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, with 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 with Nagorny at a wedding of doctor friends they attended near Salerno, Italy in 2019.
She appeared at the time to be pregnant.
The Telegram channel claims insider 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 of the Ministry of Health of Russia. She is also an expert on dwarfism.
Her boyfriend was a Kremlin foe “police torture” under Putin’s repressive laws before apparently turning loyalist after he met Maria.
He walked into a £90,000 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, and a private terrace.
The property has "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.
Then 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-multimillionaire 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."
It was not immediately possible to verify the General SVR claims.
