Eagle eyed onlookers spotted a woman with a red bag in the back seat of his car.
The Kremlin strongman - on holiday in his favourite resort in the north of Russia - had driven himself to a sacred monastery in a black Mercedes ML.
He parked and emerged from the car in his shirtsleeves.
Like a gentlemen he then opened the back door apparently for his mystery woman passenger so she
could get out.
At this point - perhaps having spotted a camera - the passenger, dubbed the 'lady with the red bag', seems to gesticulate to Putin to shut the door again.
The mystery figure appears to gesture to Putin to close the car door
It's speculated that the figure was a woman who could be Putin's new girlfriend
He obediently does so and is then seen walking alone into the church by now wearing a jacket.
Most state owned Russian TV channels cut out the sequence where the supposed woman - whose face is not seen - waves her fingers at the president to shut the door again.
The footage led to immediate speculation that Putin was with a new woman in his life.
But Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the mystery passenger was part of the President's security team.
Independent TV Rain said of the incident: "It looks like he or she is dressed in red. Supposedly the passenger is a woman."
Divorced from Lyudmila Putin, the former Russian first lady and mother of his two adult daughters, he is obsessively secret about his private life , and while he has hinted that he is "loved" he has refused to shed any light on any new woman in his life.
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