New book alleges Putin hosted a teenage calendar model and linked her to a Moscow flat

A new book claims Vladimir Putin invited a 17-year-old model who appeared in a 2010 calendar to his Moscow residence once every fortnight for more than a year, while he was still married to Lyudmila Ocheretnaya. The disclosure appears in The Tsar in Person: How Vladimir Putin Fooled Us All, by journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin, who describe the interactions as part of an alleged secret relationship that the authors say extended over a period when the president’s private life was closely guarded.

The 2010 calendar, created to mark Putin’s 58th birthday, featured young women and was printed in tens of thousands of copies. Critics later labeled the project as political propaganda meant to bolster the incumbent leader’s image ahead of the 2012 presidential election, when Putin returned to the presidency after a stint as prime minister. The book portrays the calendar as more than a novelty, saying Putin also obtained the contact details of the women pictured and that one of his close aides facilitated the teenager’s access to his residence on a recurring basis.

According to the authors, Alisa Kharcheva, then 17, became Putin’s secret acquaintance after the initial visit, and the arrangement allegedly persisted for over a year, a period described as occurring while Putin was still married. The book asserts that she eventually came to own a luxury flat in an exclusive Moscow district, with ownership traced to Grigory Baevsky, a St. Petersburg businessman described in the volume as having supplied property to several women connected to Putin’s circle. The report points to a pattern in which Baevsky is said to have transferred or sold apartments to multiple recipients, including relatives of Putin-related figures and associates.

Alisa Kharcheva, now 32, has publicly contested the most incendiary implications. In remarks to Sobesednik, she described the calendar as a gift for Putin’s birthday and said she later bought the flat through a mortgage, insisting she did not know Baevsky well and denying that Putin’s influence played any role in her real estate transaction. “We bought this flat with a mortgage,” she said, and asked whether any connection to the president had helped her obtain the property, she replied: “No one has ever asked me such stupid questions.”

The broader ownership trail cited by the authors includes public records that show Baevsky transferring or selling properties to three other women, including Anna Zatsepilina and Leysan Kabaeva—grandmother and sister of Alina Kabaeva, the former gymnast long rumored to have a close relationship with Putin—as well as to Katerina Tikhonova, the younger daughter of the president. The article notes that Alisa’s address was linked, on paper, to Baevsky’s holdings, and that a residence in Uspenskoe, a gated Moscow suburb, was among the properties involved in the transfers.

Putin’s allies and opponents have offered cautious, divergent takes on the allegations. Alexey Navalny, a leading political opponent, characterized the narrative as suggesting possible personal links rather than confirmed wrongdoing, while Alisa Kharcheva emphasized that she did not view the relationship as more than a media story. The authors frame their account as drawing on conversations with people close to Alisa and on regulatory records, but they acknowledge that many details remain unverified in the public record.

The publication arrives at a moment when questions about the private lives of powerful Russian figures continue to attract attention abroad. Reuters has previously reported on the broader pattern of property transfers to individuals associated with Putin’s inner circle, though the authors caution that their book presents allegations rather than verified proofs. The book’s claims hinge on a combination of interviews, court records, and the authors’ synthesis of public and semi-public information, without presenting a smoking gun that conclusively ties Putin to the real estate transactions.

As with many chapters in the wider discourse about Putin’s personal life, the accounts in The Tsar in Person are contested and vigorously debated among observers. The authors describe a dynamic in which an intimate, if disputed, personal relationship might have coincided with symbolic gestures designed to reinforce political authority. They stress that their narrative is built from what they characterize as credible fragments rather than a single, documentary smoking gun.

Ultimately, the book portrays a history of connections and transactions that intersect politics, media narratives, and elite property dealings, all surrounding a figure whose public life has long been guarded as tightly as his private life. Whether the alleged episodes reflect genuine personal ties or a mosaic of misinterpretations remains a question for readers, researchers, and, potentially, courts and regulators to examine as part of a broader assessment of political power and property in contemporary Russia.