According to RadarOnline.com, Alina Kabaeva, who is rumored to be in a relationship with Vladimir Putin, has confirmed that he is not only her “ideal man,” but also her “secret lover.”

Kabaeva, a former Russian gymnast, made this revelation in an interview that recently resurfaced, where she admitted to dating the Russian president, marking the first time she has publicly acknowledged their relationship.

Despite being forbidden from directly referring to Putin, Kabaeva confirmed that she and her partner were in a relationship, and expressed her joy about it.

According to the Daily Mail, in an interview from 15 years ago, Kabaeva, who is now 39 years old, was asked about having a boyfriend and why she wasn’t eager to marry him, with the interviewer suggesting that she might be afraid of being happy.

“So you’ve managed to ask this question, well done you,” Kabaeva answered at the time. “As for being scared of happiness, sometimes I am so happy I am scared to be that happy.”

“A man, a very good man, a great man,” she then said when asked who her boyfriend was. “I love him very much.”

Kabaeva’s response to a question about whether she would be willing to “steal” someone else’s husband was even more astonishing.

In 2008, when Putin and Kabaeva were believed to have started dating, the Russian president was still married to his first wife, Lyudmila. However, the couple eventually divorced in 2013.

“Let me comment,” the then 24-year-old Olympic gymnast responded. “Life is complicated, and speaking about a married man.”

“If there are issues in a family and a man is looking at another woman, and is communicating with another woman and not with his wife, it means the problem has already happened, and there wouldn’t be anything good in this family,” she told the audience at the time.

As previously covered by RadarOnline.com, Kabaeva’s interview from 2008 discussing her romantic involvement with Putin recently re-emerged after reports emerged claiming that the couple, along with their alleged children, were residing in a covert hideaway.

According to insiders in the Kremlin, the couple is believed to be residing in a secluded forest palace located approximately 250 miles away from Moscow, in order to evade any potential dangers resulting from Russia’s ongoing conflict with Ukraine.

When the pair’s secret love lair was exposed to the media, Putin reportedly grew “more furious than ever” and demanded whoever leaked the information be found.

“No one has seen the president so furious,” one insider said last week. “Putin was furious. This was not too far from having a heart attack or a stroke.”

“Putin said that he had 100 percent information that the leak came from Kabaeva’s circle of friends,” the source added before revealing how Putin blamed the Russian Federal Security Service for the leak because they “didn’t keep a more serious secret than a state secret.”