Book alleges Putin hosted teenage pin-up at residence before she bought Moscow flat

A new book alleging an illicit relationship at the highest levels of Russian politics says Vladimir Putin invited a 17-year-old who appeared in an erotic calendar to his Moscow residence on a regular basis for more than a year, and that she later came to own a luxury apartment in an exclusive district of the capital.

The Tsar in Person: How Vladimir Putin Fooled Us All, by journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin, frames the claims around Alisa Kharcheva, who was 17 when she first drew Putin’s attention in a 2010 pin-up calendar created for his 58th birthday. The calendar, produced by Moscow State University students, featured young women posing in lingerie and was printed in 50,000 copies for sale in Russia. Critics labeled the calendar as political propaganda ahead of Putin’s 2012 return to the presidency. According to the book, Putin not only received the calendar but also obtained the contact details of all the women pictured; one of his close aides then invited the teenage Alisa to the president’s residence, and she allegedly visited about once every two weeks for more than a year while Putin was still married to Lyudmila Ocheretnaya.

The authors say the arrangement helped propel Alisa into the social and educational elite. In 2011 she enrolled at the Moscow Institute of International Relations, a prestigious university known for training diplomats, and she reached the final of Miss Russia the same year. In 2012, to mark Putin’s 60th birthday, she published a post on a personal blog titled Pussy for Putin that praised the president; the post has since been deleted. The book notes that a property transfer associated with Alisa later placed her in a luxury flat in one of Moscow’s most exclusive gated communities. The mechanism, the authors say, involved Grigory Baevsky, a relatively obscure St. Petersburg businessman described as one of Putin’s trusted associates. He is listed as having provided housing to four women in recent years, including Alisa, through transfers and related arrangements. The book points to public records showing Baevsky transferring or selling apartments to several relatives of other prominent Putin-linked figures, and it cites an investigation that traced Alisa’s flat back to him. Another sister of Alina Kabaeva, Leysan, and Alina’s grandmother, Anna Zatsepilina, are named in the same pattern of transfers. Kabaeva is a former Olympic gymnastics champion long rumored to be linked to Putin, though neither has publicly acknowledged an affair.

Alisa, now 32, has spoken to Sobesednik about the allegations. She said the transaction for the Moscow flat was a standard mortgage deal and that she was not aware of any connection to Putin or his circle. “We bought this flat with a mortgage,” she said, adding that no one asked her about ties to the president. Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure, suggested the authors “give a slight hint” of a link between Alisa and Putin, based on the details in the book. He did not present new corroboration but pointed to the broader pattern the authors describe of close associates arranging property for women linked to Putin and his inner circle.

Other sources cited in the book describe Baevsky as an aide to Arkady Rotenberg, a longtime close associate of Putin and a judo partner; the authors say Baevsky has provided property to multiple women in recent years. Public records cited in the book show that Alisa’s property—along with flats for Anna Zatsepilina and Leysan Kabaeva—was transferred by Baevsky to his beneficiaries. The book also notes that Putin’s daughter, Katerina, used the address of a Baevsky-owned flat when registering a company, a detail the authors say underscores the network surrounding the president. In addition, Reuters has reported on Baevsky’s role and the transfer of properties in the broader pattern described by the authors, though Reuters did not verify all the personal claims made in the book.

The timeline presented by the authors places the initial meetings and the calendar in 2010, when Putin was prime minister and Medvedev served as president, and situates the later property transfer in the years that followed. The book’s reporting relies on interviews, documents, and publicly available records; Reuters and other outlets cited in the material corroborate some of the property-transfer elements but did not verify all personal allegations about the intimate relationship. The claims come as part of a broader examination of Putin’s private life and his close circle, an area that has long attracted intense public and international interest.

The authors defend their work as an attempt to reveal how the president’s private life may have intersected with his political and financial reach. They say their reporting is based on interviews with people close to the individuals involved, public property records, and other documentary material. Putin’s office has not publicly commented on the new book’s specific allegations. Given the sensitivity and potential impact of such claims, independent verification from multiple outlets remains crucial for any definitive assessment.