Vladimir Putin’s “family values” tsar has reportedly left her Orthodox priest husband for a Russian billionaire.
Maria Lvova-Belova was filmed walking hand-in-hand with Konstantin Malofeev at a church procession in Yekaterinburg last week, sparking speculation that the two were romantically involved.
Neither she nor Mr Malofeev have commented on claims but sources close to the Orthodox Church said they were true.
Putin appointed Ms Lvova-Belova, 39, to the lofty position of Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights shortly before he invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The International Criminal Court has since issued a warrant for her arrest over the unlawful deportation of hundreds of Ukrainian children from areas occupied by Russia.
She has been married to Pavel Kogelman since 2003 and has five children with him and another five who are adopted. She has adopted 18 children in total, including a boy taken from the destroyed Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
News of her apparently leaving him has been widely reported with one Telegram channel, Brief, sarcastically asking its 570,000 subscribers, “Are we waiting for the wedding of the year?”
Others are less amused by the alleged scandal. One religious scholar suggested to the Verstka media group that it smacked of hypocrisy.
“I think this will all be settled, but the question is how? The elite has its own morals, its own rules, and the Church, in general, covers it up,” he told Verstka, which says five sources have since corroborated claims of the affair.
Ms Lvova-Belova has been one of Putin’s most vocal supporters of the war in Ukraine, pumping out videos of herself on social media that portray her as a model of modesty and family values.
Wearing long dresses and often posing with children, she also uses the clips to give pro-Kremlin messages and has regularly lectured children from Ukraine on the sanctity of marriage and its place in religion.
This week, she discussed school exams, welcomed a group of Ethiopian language students and gave parenting advice to single mothers. She also said it was important to remember the children killed in “Ukraine’s war of aggression” in its eastern Donbas region.
“It is impossible to forget the eyes of the wounded children and teenagers whom I visited in hospitals,” she said.
Her reported lover Mr Malofeev, is 50 and sports a thick bushy beard. He, too, is a strong supporter of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and holds strong religious views, earning him the nickname the “Orthodox oligarch”.
He bankrolls a media company called Tsargrad which broadcasts religious propaganda and advocates making Putin tsar for life. He reportedly divorced his wife last summer.
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