Vladimir Putin befriended and was visited by a 17-year-old who posed in an erotic calendar in order to boost his voter appeal, Russian critics of the president have claimed in a new book.
Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin report in ‘The Tsar in Person. How Vladimir Putin Fooled Us All’ that the Russian leader paid for models to pose in an erotic calendar ahead of the 2012 presidential election, which saw him return to the top role.
‘In reality, along with the calendar, Putin also received the contact details of the girls who appeared in it,’ the authors claim.
Among them was 17-year-old Alisa Kharcheva, now 32, who starred in April.
‘Four people familiar with the story told us that soon after [the calendar was published], Putin’s aides called Kharcheva and invited her to the president’s suburban residence,’ the authors, both Russian journalists, claimed.
‘After her first visit, the young beauty was taken to see the president about once every two weeks for the course of a year, according to one source.’
In January 2011, Kharcheva appeared on TV show ‘Ten Million’ and brushed off comments about her age. She said the calendar was ‘within the limits of what is permissible, so to speak….Permissible by the public, by the moral values of the public.’
She claimed she posed in a ‘sundress’ for the photoshoot and said Putin was impressed. ‘He liked it very much. His press secretary said that he liked it.’
A source told the authors: ‘For each meeting between Putin and Alisa we would prepare some sort of project, for her to present to Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin].
‘Alisa did this willingly. She felt grateful that she had been introduced to the president.’
That year, Kharcheva was admitted as a student to Moscow’s Institute of International Relations [MGIMO], Russia’s most prestigious university which trains future diplomats, spies and government officials.
‘Normally only the children of the wealthy or exceptionally talented straight-A students got in.
‘Alisa didn’t belong to either group, and just a year earlier she had failed to get into Moscow State University, entering a much simpler institution instead.’
A source said: ‘This was a reward from Putin.’
Two years later, for Putin’s 60th birthday, Kharcheva posed with a kitten and a photograph of the president in a blog post titled ‘Pussy for Putin’, which extolled the president’s leadership.
‘I like his attitude to his job, I like his sense of humour. He is an ordinary man, just like me and you,’ she said.
But this was apparently met with disapproval from Putin, now reinstalled as president.
‘Very soon, Kharcheva deleted the post, as well as removing all her old photographs from public access. Neither she nor Putin’s press service ever commented on this photo shoot.’
It later emerged that Kharcheva had suddenly acquired an expensive apartment in a prestigious district of Moscow.
In 2016, Reuters cited public records in reporting that one Grigory Baevsky, then a ‘business associate of an old friend of Putin’, Arkady Rotenberg, had sold or transferred properties to three women, including Kharcheva.
‘Baevsky has previously attracted little attention,’ Reuters reported at the time.
‘His connection to Putin was uncovered by investigative journalist Roman Anin who was conducting research for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an East European media network.’
In 2015, Baevsky transferred an apartment in a smart gated complex in Moscow to Alisa Kharcheva, then 23. The sale price was not disclosed.
Asked how she came to buy a flat from Baevsky, Kharcheva said the transaction was a normal one conducted through a real estate agency. She said she did not know the businessman.
‘We bought this flat with a mortgage. And we pay that mortgage to this day.’
Asked if any connection to Putin had helped her obtain the flat from Baevsky, she replied: ‘No one has ever asked me such stupid questions.’
Baevsky had arranged apartments for other women close to Putin, including one of his daughters and the family of Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast and public supporter of Putin, the records showed.
‘That is how we understood whose girlfriend [Alisa] really was,’ the authors of the new book claimed.
The Kremlin denied any association with Baevsky. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters at the time: ‘We know nothing about who this (Baevsky) is. The President is also not acquainted with him.’
Kabaeva is believed to be the longtime partner of President Putin, though has lived a reclusive life for years. Neither have ever acknowledged the alleged relationship.
The book also cited mystery payments allegedly made to Kharcheva’s father, Vsevolod Kharchev.
A state company headed by Vladimir Tabak, the man behind the Putin erotic calendar and who is still involved in social media ‘propaganda’, pays $1,000 a month [£740] to the father, the book claims.
‘In other words, the man who became a matchmaker for the tsar and the young maiden pays her father $1,000 a month for who knows what, maybe for silence,’ the book reads.
