"Anyone who's had a fight with their mother thinks they can mediate with Iran," said a former US State Department Persian language spokesperson this week, responding to Russia's offer to mediate between the US and Iran. What does he actually mean? A glimpse into the past that Vladimir Putin is apparently trying to hide.
On August 9, 1999, then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin and appointed the Federal Security Service chief as prime minister – Vladimir Putin. This marked the security veteran's first entry into state politics, where he has remained ever since. Shortly before taking office, his father died, and about a year earlier his mother had passed away – both from cancer. At least that's what Putin himself claimed. But in a small village in eastern Georgia lived a woman who firmly insisted she was the Russian president's biological mother. The story of Vera Putina, a woman who died in 2023 and who, even after her death, remained the great secret of one of the world's most powerful men.
In 2003, Dutch filmmaker Inge Smits released a film about Putina. According to Putin's alleged mother, the Russian president's father was a Russian mechanic named Platon Privalov. He got her pregnant while married to another woman, hiding this fact from her. When Putina discovered Privalov's wife, she left him. According to her, she gave birth on October 7, 1950 – exactly two years before Putin's official birth date – and named the child Vova, a common nickname for Vladimir.
In 1952, Putina married a Georgian soldier and moved with him and her son Vova to the village of Metekhi in Georgia, located about 12 miles from the city of Gori, where Josef Stalin was born. In December 1960, under pressure from her husband, she gave Vova to his grandparents in St. Petersburg, Russia (then Leningrad), Putin's official birthplace. Putina believed that those whom Putin refers to as his parents adopted her son from his grandparents.
In 2008, the British Telegraph spoke with a former elementary school teacher in Metekhi. That woman claimed she taught Putin between 1958-1960. She described him as "a most brilliant child who loved Russian fairy tales and Russian was his favorite subject. He also loved fishing and wrestling. He was the shortest child in the class but he always wanted to win at everything."
Last year, Israel Hayom interviewed Polish writer Krystyna Kurczab-Redlich, who lived in Russia where she worked as a journalist, published two non-fiction books about Russia, and is currently working on a Putin biography. In the interview, Kurczab-Redlich said that in 2000, while speaking with hospital patients who had been shot by Russian forces, a foreign journalist approached her and told her there was a group of journalists going to meet Putin's mother. According to her, "It wasn't a secret at all."
Kurczab-Redlich added that during that period, a man came to the Chechen embassy in Tbilisi and tried to convince the Chechens to kidnap a woman named Vera from the village of Metekhi for half a million dollars, claiming she was Putin's mother. The Chechens didn't believe him, so the man played them recordings of her neighbors telling stories about Vera and Vova who lived in the village during his childhood. "The next day, when we set out for Georgia, they wouldn't let us in. That's when I understood there's no smoke without fire."
In the past, many questions have arisen about Putin's family history. The Russian president's background is shrouded in mystery, and the details provided in his autobiography about the first decade of his life are very scarce compared to those of other world leaders. According to Putin's official line, his parents were in their forties when he was born, leaving a gap of more than a decade since his two older brothers died in infancy until Putin's birth.
"Imagine that in Leningrad, before Vova's arrival, no one saw Maria pregnant or with a baby carriage," Kurczab-Redlich told Israel Hayom (David Baron). "Vladimir and Maria's two children died. One during the Nazi siege of Leningrad, and the other before that. Children who grew up in the same block said that Aunt Masha brought the new child in her arms, said he was her son, Vova, and asked them not to insult him. Something along those lines."
"He needed to start first grade and learn everything from scratch," she said, "so they issued him a new birth certificate stating he was born in 1952. That's how Vova's real biography began, but in his official biography, to this day, the woman listed as his mother is not his mother, his father is not his father, his birthplace is not the real place, and even the date is off by two years."
According to Putina, she had not seen her son since 1960, but in 1999 suddenly spotted him on television. When asked by Smits how she recognized her son after not seeing him for nearly 40 years, she replied: "No matter how much time has passed, do you think a mother wouldn't recognize her own son?" Putina had a black-and-white photograph of Vova. Photography experts who examined it weren't convinced whether the photo matched the Russian president.
In an interview with the Telegraph, she declared she was no longer willing to speak with journalists on the matter, but challenged Putin to disprove her story. "I'm ready to take a DNA test." Putina also claimed that nurses had visited her and taken blood samples, supposedly for DNA tests, but the results were never published.
Putina's claim also presents an intriguing detail in light of the conflict between Russia and Georgia, giving it a more personal dimension. Moscow has previously claimed that Putina's assertions were nothing but Georgian propaganda. "I used to be proud that my son became the president of Russia, since the war (with Georgia) I've been ashamed," she said in that Telegraph interview.
For those inclined toward conspiracy theories that might strengthen speculation about Putin's mother, some claim that Russian journalist and tycoon Artyom Borovik was on his way to publish the full story about Vera Putina when his private plane crashed. Italian journalist Antonio Russo sent photographs of Putina to Italy in preparation for an article about her shortly before he was shot dead near Tbilisi. No connection has been proven between these deaths and Putina.
