VLADIMIR Putin has lived a double life of secrets, sex and secret children with a string of women, a bombshell book has claimed.

In The Tsar Himself: How Vladimir Putin Deceived Us All, exiled Russian journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin lift the lid on the 72-year-old dictator’s hidden harem.

They expose a web of affairs that stretches from strip clubs and student dorms to the gilded palaces of Monte Carlo and Moscow.

At the heart of it all is Svetlana Krivonogikh, a former shop cleaner whose life changed overnight when she caught Putin’s eye in 1999.

Four years later, she gave birth to a daughter, Elizaveta – now known as Luiza Rozova – who bears what one investigative reporter called a “phenomenal resemblance” to the Russian president.

Even facial recognition experts found a 70.44 per cent similarity between the two.

Her birth coincided with Svetlana’s transformation from struggling worker to multimillionaire.

In 2003 she snapped up a £2.9 million flat in Monaco, and leaked Pandora Papers later revealed a fortune of more than £78 million, including luxury properties and a yacht.

But Putin’s wandering eye didn’t rest there.

Enter Alina Kabaeva, the gymnast once dubbed “Russia’s most flexible woman”.

Fresh from Olympic gold in 2004 and a nude photoshoot for Maxim, Kabaeva was introduced to Putin by her coach, Irina Viner – the wife of billionaire Alisher Usmanov.

By 2006, the pair were lovers, and just a year later, Kabaeva’s former boyfriend, singer Murat Nasyrov, died in a suspicious “fall” from a fifth-floor balcony.

The Kremlin’s fury at any mention of Putin’s private life was laid bare in 2008, when a Moscow tabloid reported that he and Kabaeva were to wed.

Putin railed against reporters for sticking their “snot-ridden noses” into his affairs – and the paper was swiftly raided, its editor forced out, and the publication shuttered.

Kabaeva, now 42, is believed to have two sons with Putin – Ivan, 10, and Vladimir, 6 – though the Kremlin insists on secrecy, even giving the boys the false surname Spiridonov and erasing records of their existence.

She was rewarded handsomely for her loyalty: in 2014, Putin installed her as head of National Media Group on a reported £7.7 million salary, and she also holds a major stake in Bank Rossiya.

The lovers were even seen wearing matching wedding rings at the Sochi Olympics, where Kabaeva lit the torch – by then known as Russia’s “secret First Lady”.

Even that wasn’t enough for the power-hungry strongman.

In 2010, Alisa Kharcheva, a 17-year-old student who posed provocatively in a birthday calendar calling Putin “the best”, was reportedly visiting him twice a month for a year.

Her fortunes rocketed too – a place at Moscow’s elite foreign affairs university and a plush flat in a gated complex followed.

She later gushed: “I think he [Putin] is a fantastic man, a strong leader and an ideal head of the country.”

The book paints a damning portrait of a Kremlin court where cheating and polygamy are the norm and women’s wealth and status depend entirely on Putin’s favour.

“Putin is all about hypocrisy,” says Badanin.

“The only thing about him that hasn’t changed is his hypocrisy, or, as the FSB calls it, his cover story.”

While Putin crushed dissent at home – Badanin’s newsroom was raided and he was forced into exile simply for interviewing the woman believed to be Putin’s love child – his own life was cloaked in secrecy.

It was Lyudmila, Putin’s long-suffering wife of nearly 30 years, who perhaps saw most clearly what was coming.

In 2004 she broke down, warning him he was becoming an autocrat bent on restoring Soviet-style control.

By 2014, the couple were divorced – leaving Putin free to pursue his parade of mistresses without even the pretence of a family man.

As Badanin and Rubin conclude, the tyrant’s harem remains one of the Kremlin’s most closely guarded secrets.

But their revelations expose the real man behind the macho image: a hypocrite cloaking a life of lust, lies and lavish rewards behind talk of patriotism and traditional values.