Vladimir Putin is considering parachuting his daughter to a position in parliament, so she has the power after he dies, it has been claimed.
The Russian leader has long been dogged about being seriously sick, with some saying he has had to use deep-fake technology to stage his appearances while undergoing medical treatment.
Combined with the war on-going in Ukraine, Kremlin officials are reportedly anxious about how the status quo will be maintained after Putin dies. There is now a ‘clear demand’ from Russian elites to ‘understand their future without Putin’.
Putin’s 35-year-old daughter Katerina Tikhonova may be their answer, Telegram channel General SVR has reported.
The channel is run by someone who claims to be an exiled Kremlin lieutenant-general who uses the alias Viktor Mikhailovich.
He said: ‘The candidacy of the daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Katerina Tikhonova, for the post of head of the United Russia party is again being actively discussed.
‘And I must say that recently, without exception, all interested persons in Putin’s entourage support this idea.’
Katerina Tikhonova is currently deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems at Moscow State University.
The plan would be to make the current agriculture minister Dmitry Patrushev, 44, president with Tikhonova ‘acting as a puppet master’ from parliament.
Mr Mikhailovich wrote: ‘In the understanding of a narrow circle of people who have access to the presidential ear, Katerina Tikhonova is the only person who can act as a guarantor of the stability of the existence of the Putin regime, without being a direct successor.’
Tikhonova was born to Putin and his first wife Lyudmila while the Russian leader was still a KGB spy in Germany.
She is the deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems at Moscow State University.
