- HAMBURG, Germany (UPI) -
Lyudmila, wife of Russian President Vladmir Putin, thinks he is a vampire,
and mourns the fact that the former KGB agent went back into espionage
as head of Russia's Federal Security Service in 1998 - and even then he
would regularly go to Finland to get away from the omnipresent microphones.
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- Putin, by contrast, hated his wife's obsession with horoscopes,
and once complained that anyone who could stay with her for three weeks
"deserved a monument."
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- These insights into the domestic life of Russia's first
couple come from a new book written by Lyudmilla's best friend, to be published
in Germany next week. Extracts appeared today in the German magazine "Der
Spiegel."
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- Irene Pietsch, wife of a German banker based in Hamburg,
became friends with Lyudmila in 1995 when Putin was deputy Mayor of St
Petersburg. Keen to revive the commercial links of the old medieval Hanseatic
League, Putin became a regular visitor to Hamburg. The Putins and Pietsch
family became close friends and exchanged family visits.
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- The two women swapped letters and faxes, and talked privately
about sex and God, the etiquette of tipping in restaurants and whether
or not it was right to take your own food into a bar.
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- "My husband always goes to Finland when he has something
important to say," Lyudmila confided. "He doesn't think there
is anywhere in Russia where you can speak without being overheard."
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- "Unfortunately, my husband is a vampire", Lyudmila
told Irene with a rueful smile. "But he is just the right man for
me -- he doesn't drink and he doesn't beat me."
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- Putin has hitherto kept tight control over his image
as a modern and efficient post-Soviet man, a judo expert and fitness fanatic,
at home in the West and determined to make Russia into a prosperous democracy.
This account is the first leak in the tight wall of image control that
Putin has built around himself, and Kremlin officials Friday refused to
comment on the remarks of Russia's first lady.
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- The last time the two women spoke was in July 1998, when
Boris Yeltsin promoted Putin to run Russia's security service.
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- "It's terrible. We won't be allowed to contact each
other ever again," Lyudmila told her friend over the phone. "This
isolation is dreadful. No more traveling wherever we want to go. No longer
able to say what we want. I had only just begun to live".
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- One evening, the two couples were talking of the fundamentals
of life over dinner. Lyudmila said that the greatest virtue was truth.
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- "Who cares about your truths?" her husband
said, and turned to Irene. "Anyone who can spend three weeks with
Lyudmila deserves a monument". "His two green eyes are like two
hungry, lurking predators, like weapons", Irene recorded, after the
couples spent a week together at a Russian government guesthouse in Archangelskoye,
where they lived on Lyudmila's tasty Russian soups.
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- Lyudmila said she had one regret about their German friends.
Her husband had learned that German wives woke early to prepare breakfast
while their husbands slept on, and started demanding that she do the same.
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- In 1997, Lyudmila took a trip alone to Hamburg for four
days, mostly spent shopping, but paying in cash. Putin was worried about
the fuss made over the credit cards used by Mikhail Gorbachev's wife, Raisa,
and members of Boris Yeltsin's family. "I will never be like Raisa",
Lyudmila told her friend.
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- The book, "Fragile Friendships,", is published
in German by Molden Verlag, Vienna.
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