HE COMES home from work at midnight, never discusses politics or asks for advice and likes a glass of yoghurt before he goes to bed.

Thus ends an average day in the life of President Putin of Russia, according to the woman who knows him best.

Mr Putin’s wife, Lyudmila, shed an unusual ray of light on the private life of Russia’s first family yesterday in what was seen as a Kremlin-inspired attempt to buff the President’s tarnished image.

The usually media-shy Mrs Putin, 48, portrayed her husband as diligent and strong-willed, if somewhat austere, in an interview with three Russian newspapers yesterday.

Her only complaint, she said, was that her husband was too devoted to his job. “One needs not only to work, but also to live,” said Mrs Putin, who met her husband while working as an air hostess and married him in 1983. “He works too hard,” she said. “All members of the family know it and that is why those who want to communicate [with him] wait for his arrival at the table with a cup of the evening yoghurt.”

Mrs Putin lamented that Russian women suffered discrimination and pointed out there were no women in the Cabinet. “One can say that the world consists of men and women, but power belongs only to men.

“In my family I have always stood up for my rights and the rights of all women, but I strive not to do it aggressively,” she said. “Aggressive [methods], in my view, are not acceptable at any place or time. And they only hurt us women.”

The interviews followed a rare solo overseas trip by Mrs Putin to Italy to promote a cultural exchange programme.

The First Lady and her two teenage daughters, Masha and Katya, are usually off limits to the tightly controlled Russian media, but the President’s image has taken a battering in the past year over the Kremlin’s handling of terrorist attacks, welfare reforms, revolutions in former Soviet states and the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon.

Lilia Shevtsova, of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, said: “The Kremlin has to look around for some gimmick to give the President life because he has no vision, design or strategy.”

Kremlin spin-doctors have exploited the President’s labrador, Koni, already. “Sooner or later they had to reach beyond the dog and get to the wife,” Ms Shevtsova said. “She has become part of a campaign to improve Putin’s image, to make him warmer and more human.”

The interviews coincided with a wave of criticism of Mr Putin over the nine-year prison sentence handed to Mr Khodorkovsky on Tuesday. “Too much,” the business daily Vedomosti said. “Virtually the entire 1990s have been declared criminal,” Vremya Novostei said.

Mr Khodorkovsky’s supporters say that his trial was orchestrated by the Kremlin to punish him for funding opposition parties and to allow Mr Putin’s allies from the security services to carve up his assets.

Mr Putin still enjoys broad public support, but his once astronomical approval ratings have dipped this year. A recent poll by the Levada Centre showed that 8.3 per cent of Russians would vote for Mr Khodorkovsky if he ran for President in 2008, when Mr Putin is due to step down. Another Levada poll showed last month that 64 per cent of Russians thought that Mr Putin protected the interests of the security services and the business elite.

Mrs Putin, however, assured readers that her husband was fully in control and had cut short any attempts to lobby him through his family. “He just made it understood that this is unacceptable,” she said. “And I, of course, as is always the case in our family, accepted this position as my own.”

Explore World News

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• The Afghan grave that began decades of war
• Berlin hails Hitler 'assassin'
• Science thinks big for better IVF