When Russian leaders are accused of adultery

[whitehall]

Since elections have been sanctioned in Russia the "candidates" have been subject to western style politics. Vlad Putin has been accused of adultery and crooked politics and the next thing you knolw his wife goes missing. Putin's wife hasn't been seen in public since June and rumors have been swirling around the Kremlin that she is locked up in a psycho ward somewhere in the motherland.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Russian spouses have always been at best invisible since the days of Stalin. Western agencies didn't know if Andropov was married or not and it wasn't until after his death that they even found out he had a daughter.

But he does look a vicious dude, and she looks like she has been through the wars.

The documents from the archive of the BND, Germany's spy agency, paint a dark picture of the Russian prime minister, who plans to return to the presidency next year.
Gathering information through the work of an agent posing as an interpreter for Ludmilla Putina, Mr Putin's wife, the BND heard that the then youthful 33-year-old spy chief was a "wife beater and a philanderer" during his stint in the German city from 1985 to 1990.
The information surfaced in a story run by the newspaper Berliner Zeitung based on documents found by Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, a respected BND expert who has published books and papers on the agency.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian prime minister, dismissed the allegations in the documents, telling the Daily Telegraph that the "stories were complete nonsense."
In a coup for the German intelligence services the agent code-named "Balcony" owing, apparently, to her large breast size gained the confidence of Mrs Putina and became something of an agony aunt to her.
In a series of meetings with the BND spy at the Putins' prefabricated house on 101 Radebergerstrasse, Mrs Putin, angered by her treatment at the hands of her husband, claimed to be the victim of a man prone to both violence and extramarital affairs.
The German newspaper Bild said the allegations of philandering added substance to long-standing speculation that when the Putins left East Germany in 1990 following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Vladimir left behind an illegitimate child.
By then the BND, fearful that Balcony's cover might be blown, had withdrawn her back to West Germany where she retired from the service.
Dieter Arndt, a BND spokesman, refused to discuss the revelations contained in the documents.
"We do not discuss are tactics and methods," he told Berliner Zeitung.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

There are even rumors he has divorced her.

In a stilted interview, the Putins allowed themselves to be filmed in a sitting room at the Russian prime minister's official residence in Moscow.
Dressed in matching beige and seated on a beige sofa, they were shown fielding questions about their backgrounds, income, and children from a government official helping compile a new Russian census.
Ludmila Putina looked distinctly uncomfortable during the interview, while Mr Putin showered his attention on his black Labrador Koni, who was curled up on the sofa, rather than his wife.
The show of marital bliss failed to convince Russian bloggers who dredged up long-standing rumours that the couple is actually divorced.
No credible evidence of that has ever been presented. and when a Moscow newspaper claimed in 2008 that Mr Putin had secretly divorced and was to marry former Olympic gymnast Alina Kabayeva, the paper's billionaire owner, Alexander Lebedev, shut it down soon afterwards.
Mr Putin said there was "not one word of truth" in the claim.
Mr Putin's spokesman on Monday dismissed the latest rumours circulating on the internet about his boss' alleged divorce as "nonsense," claiming his "immense workload" was the real reason why he was pictured so rarely with his wife.
Mr Putin and Ludmila, a former air hostess, got married in 1983 and have two daughters.