VLADIMIR Putin's gymnast lover has not been seen in public for three weeks following wild rumours the Russian president died.
As Russia's so-called "First Mistress", Alina Kabaeva, 40, lives a continuous life of glamour and mystery but has allegedly spent recent months holed up inside Putin's secret forest palace.
Since 2008, the brunette bombshell has been the target of sustained speculation that she is Putin's secret lover and the mother of his youngest kids.
The gymnast-turned-politician is now rumoured to be missing in the wake of last month's bizarre reports Putin had croaked.
Public appearances by the despot's young mistress halted in the last week of October - the same day the rumours broke that Putin had suffered a heart attack.
The woman that has never shied from the spotlight appears to have gone to ground.
Since the claims of Putin's death - largely dismissed as conspiracy theories by analysts - swirled online, Alina completely disappeared from view.
Earlier in October, she had been highly visible in footage from at her own Rhythmic Gymnastics Academy in Sochi, an elite training base for stars of the future.
Confirmed sightings of her then completely stopped on October 22 after an international tournament held at her academy.
Alina was seen wearing a white jacket and cutting a huge cake to mark the end of the competition.
Although she has previously had long absences from public life - she disappeared the same day that rumours of her alleged partner's death began spreading.
Claims first surfaced on the Telegram channel, General SVR, that the Russian leader had died at his Valdai palace, just north of Moscow, where Alina is alleged to live with their shared children.
The same channel, which claims to receive insider knowledge from Putin’s circle, says Putin's body doubles are now being coached in what to say and how to behave.
Several Russian and Ukrainian sources also allege that body doubles controlled by his senior apparatchiks and security henchmen are now parading around the Kremlin.
At the end of October, the Kremlin was forced to issue an extraordinary denial that their leader was dead, while Kyiv argued it was a purposeful test of his popularity.
According to General SVR, Putin’s corpse remains in a freezer at Valdai palace, while Kremlin crooks discuss whether to run his doppelganger at next year's election.
The channel claimed today: “In the coming days, special equipment will be delivered to the presidential residence in Valdai, in which, according to experts, Putin’s corpse can be stored for a long time."
Alina, who is 31 years younger than Putin, shot to fame as "Russia's most flexible woman" after picking up hoards of international medals for gymnastics in her teens.
She went on to win Gold at the 2004 Athens Games and Bronze at the 2000 in Sydney.
The now 40-year-old is one of most decorated gymnasts in history, with 2 Olympic medals, 14 World Championship medals, and 21 European Championship medals.
She would later lose six of her World Championship medals for doping.
Her celebrity status was fully secured after she posed naked for a men's magazine in 2004.
In heavy makeup and partially draped in fur, the nude sporting star smiled provocatively at the camera.
Photographer Mikhail Korolov commented: “I didn’t even need to persuade her. She behaved very naturally. She’s full of sex.”
After retiring from gymnastics, Alina threw herself into a quickly-developed career in politics.
She became a member of the Russian Parliament between 2007 and 2014, representing the United Russia party and voting for various controversial anti-LGBT laws.
It was quite the career move for a woman who had dabbled in modelling and singing.
The Olympic legend was later appointed chair of Moscow’s most important pro-Kremlin TV and newspaper empire, National Media Group — despite having no experience.
The brunette stunner was first linked to Putin in 2008 after a report in a Moscow newspaper run by media tycoon and former KGB spy Alexander Lebedev.
The despot was still married to his first wife at the time, Lyudmila Putina, whom he later divorced in 2014.
Putin quickly denied the claims and slammed “those who with their snotty noses and erotic fantasies prowl into others’ lives”.
Around that time they first met, Alina admitted on a kids TV show that she had found her "ideal man".
A young boy asked: “Have you met your ideal man?”
And without naming the Russian leader, Alina replied giggling: “I have met him" and added that she was “so happy”.
“A man, a very good man, a great man," she said, adding: “I love him very much.”
However, their alleged 15-year relationship has never been publicly acknowledged and Russian state media bans any mention of links between the two.
Throughout the years, it appears that Putin's presumed lover has somewhat relished her role as "the uncrowned queen of Russia" - or at least enjoyed the gossip behind it.
While Putin was still married to his first wife and speculation was rife of an affair, Alina appeared at 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi wearing a wedding ring.
She then spent years not officially denying their relationship but giving vague answers like: “I hope that some day the gossipers will calm down.”
And by 2015, Alina already seemed to be living the life of a First Lady.
She was rumoured to have a fleet of limousines at her disposal — and during a visit to a Moscow cafe, a squad of machine gun-toting security guards accompanied her.
In 2016, Kabaeva appeared in public again wearing a ring on her ring finger.
In February 2017, Alina appeared to be showing off the ring at a gymnastics tournament, while rumours also swirled that she was hiding a baby bump.
A Russian newspaper then reported that the pair were engaged - but the story was denied and the paper was shut down by Kremlin authorities.
For years, Putin's supposed mistress enjoyed a life of luxury living in a mansion in Switzerland overlooking Lake Geneva bought for her and her children by the tyrant.
But since Russia's brutal and bloody invasion of Ukraine, Putin allegedly moved Alina and the kids into his heavily-guarded and gold-encrusted Valdai palace.
Unnamed officials claimed they had spotted kids on the premises of the luxurious mansion and satellite images taken between 2016 and 2020 showed a playground in the woods, which is believed to have been built for the family.
Rumours also briefly circulated that she had been shipped off to a nuclear bunker in Siberia for her protection.
Instead, she defied sanctions to wear a £2,000 British-designed dress as she hosted a Z-symbol parade in support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in April 2022.
At the military parade, she linked Russia's victory in the Second World War to their invasion of Ukraine: "This theme, you see, this story, doesn’t only go into the past. It stays with us.”
Then the glamorous former gymnast mostly vanished until June 2022, when she was pictured flanked by female bodyguards in St Petersburg.
Carrying a £4,220 Valentino Roman stud large bag, her security kept tightly around her amid ongoing rumours she was pregnant.
In March, a doctor was identified for the first time as the medical professional who had been with Alina as she gave birth to at least two of Putin's children, Russian investigative outlet Proekt claimed.
The intensely private and paranoid Putin could likely be the driving force behind Alina's disappearance from public view.
In March, a Kremlin insider claimed that a furious Putin blamed his lover's gossipy friends for leaking details of their plush lifestyle.
It followed an exposé of his secret life with Alina being exposed by the Russian investigative site The Project who discussed their life together in his secret palace on the shores of Lake Valdai.
The outlet claimed he bought her a property empire valued at £100million using a slush fund in Cyprus.
Telegram channel General SVR alleged that the revelations sparked a "furious" row between him and his mistress.
It claimed: "Putin said that he had 100 per cent information that the leak came from Kabaeva’s circle of friends.
"They say that no one has ever seen the president so furious."
In the days that followed, more claims emerged that Putin had introduced a vast no-go zone around Valdai palace - locking his alleged girlfriend further away from public life.
The vast new exclusion zone - larger than the Isle of Wight and the Mediterranean island of Malta - was enforced around the luxury residence.
Guarded by a federal security service, trespassers on the complex and exclusion zone face two years "correctional labour" and fines of up to £5,300.
A Moscow source previously told The Sun: “Putin is an intensely private man - he has been hiding his two adult daughters under fake IDs for years. Even now, though he talks about them occasionally, he never names them.
“If Alina gave birth to his children, her hiding away might be one of the strongest hints pointing to this.
"He is obsessive about the security of his family.”
In the meantime, the fate of Putin's alleged longest-running mistress remains unknown.
