Vladimir Putin’s vodka oligarch has fled Russia as the war rages in Ukraine, it has been claimed.
Billionaire Vasily Anisimov owned the licence for the Putinka vodka brand, named after the dictator.
Now company records in London show him as having recently changed his citizenship from Russian to Croatian.
And he is reported to have moved to Switzerland five years after returning to live in his homeland.
Putin has scolded wealthy Russians who have fled abroad after he led his country into a costly war with Ukraine.
Anisimov, 71, who has not spoken of his move, is one of the few tycoons close to Putin who has not been sanctioned in the West, although Ukraine put him on its list.
The vodka magnate worth £1.3billion is also said to be very close to Arkady Rotenberg, a billionaire and close Putin confidante.
Anisimov was a business partner with Kremlin-friendly Alisher Usmanov, a former shareholder at Arsenal FC in London, who, like Rotenberg, has been sanctioned.
He was also close to Putin through martial arts and was president of the Russian Judo Federation for 12 years before abruptly quitting in October citing family reasons.
The tycoon’s other main business interests are mining, chemicals, metals, oil and gas as well as real estate.
Yet only last month, the Russian president honoured the former nuclear power plant boss - even though he earlier took foreign citizenship.
A Putin decree awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland.
The Croatian citizen is shown on a British company listing at Companies House in the UK
On Wednesday the Mirror reported how desperate Putin, who is struggling to draft enough soldiers has resorted to recruit football “hooligans” to his armed forces and prisoners to make tanks.
Notorious fans have been mobilised into the 106th guard division of airborne forces for deployment in a reconnaissance and sabotage squad.
A video shows the former football thugs as paratroopers just four years after Putin hosted the FIFA World Cup finals in Russia.
The fighters “used to be football hooligans, and have now stood up to defend the Motherland ”, Russian website Readovka says.
The ultra fans are seen marching and undergoing battlefield drills.
Comments suggest some at least are from Tula, 125 miles south of Moscow, where FC Tula Arsenal plays.
It is also the home of the 106th Airborne Division.
In July it was reported that battle-hardened Colonel Andrei Vasilyev, 49, and Col. Sergey Kuzminov, 40, had died in Ukraine.
Both were deputy commanders of the division.
No identities were given of the supposed draftee hooligans.
Separately, Putin has drafted in 250 prisoners to man Russia’s biggest tank factory as he runs short of military firepower in Ukraine.
