MOSCOW "
President Vladimir V. Putin,
who during eight years of centralized rule has kept his private life largely
sealed from view behind the Kremlins walls, on Friday bluntly dismissed
rumors that he had secretly divorced his wife for the affections of a gymnast
less than half his age.
The moment,
prompted by a question from a Russian journalist while Mr. Putin
held a news conference at an Italian villa with Silvio
Berlusconi, the prime minister-elect of
He paused and
answered another question, and then returned to the subject and pushed back.
"What you are saying has not a single word of truth," he said.
The question
followed the publication on Thursday of an unusual article in Moskovsky Korrespondent, a
Mr. Putin has been married to Ludmilla
Putina, 51, since July 1983 - two months before
Ms. Kabayeva was born. The couple has two grown
daughters, but Mr. Putin and Mrs. Putina
are not often seen together in public, which has long
fueled rumors that
Ms. Kabayeva has been a member of
Parliament since she was selected for a seat late last year by United Russia,
the political party Mr. Putin controls. She has not
spoken publicly since Thursday, when the article appeared and its claims were picked
up and circulated by newspapers and Web sites in
Her spokeswoman
threatened legal action against Moskovsky Korrespondent if it did not run a correction.
After denying the
articles contents, Mr. Putin softened a bit and
remarked that Moskovsky Korrespondent
was not the first to speculate on his personal life.
In other
such publications other successful, beautiful young women and girls have been
mentioned," he said with a smile. "I dont think it will be a
surprise if I say that I like them all, because they are all Russian
women."
He
also called Russian women the "most talented and beautiful," adding
that they could be challenged only by the women of
He then ruminated
briefly on the limits of privacy in public life - a condition that he
suggested was true even in the climate of limited civic discourse in
Society has
the right to know how public figures live," he said. "But even in
this case, there is a limit: private life, which no one has the right to
trespass."
He added, in
familiar form, "I have always disliked those who, with their infected
noses and erotic fantasies, break into other peoples private
affairs."
Whether the
articles underlying assertion " that Mr.
Putin was romantically involved with Ms. Kabayeva " would stand was not clear. But even
the owner of the newspaper, Aleksandr Lebedev, distanced himself from it.
Mr. Lebedev wrote a follow-up article in the paper on Friday,
saying that he had been away fishing, and without phone communication, when the
original article was prepared and published. Upon his return to
I do not
like when journalists pull sensations out of thin air," he wrote. "Everything
that is written there falls into this category."
He called the
report "nonsense" and said it was based on a source he described as
the "O.B.S. news agency." Those initials, he said, stood for
"one babushka said."
Interfax reported that the
papers editor, Grigory Nekhoroshev,
had resigned.
But the
papers deputy editor, Igor Dudinski, said the
staff stood by the article, adding, "We had information, and we reported
it."
Television
viewers were spared the speculation, the denial and the backpedaling.
The evening news
broadcast on the state-influenced television station NTV did not cover the
rumor or Mr. Putins remarks. Instead, it devoted
extensive coverage to Yuri M. Luzhkov,