Vera Putina, 82, has claimed he is the child she gave away at the age of ten, giving an account of an unhappy childhood which is fiercely disputed by the Kremlin:

Vera Putina lives hand-to-mouth in rural Georgia but displays the famous hospitality of the people of the Caucuses. Draping a cloth over the table in her garden, she piles it with fruit, nuts and shot glasses of chacha – homemade vodka.

Her house sits on a dirt track in the village of Metekhi, about 12 miles from Gori which was occupied by Russian tanks this August during the conflict over the breakaway state of South Ossetia. A tiny woman, with gnarled worker’s hands, only Mrs Putina’s strong cheekbones and deep-set, piercing blue eyes...