Putin with Lyudmila in front of the Taj Mahal in 2000. (Reuters)

Moscow, June 7 (Reuters): Hours after President Vladimir Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, told Russians their marriage was over, an anchorman on a satirical on-line show gravely announced the latest news: Putin has named Lyudmila “acting First Lady”.

It was a joke, of course, but Russians say there’s a touch of truth in every joke: While the reasons for the separation may be deeply personal, the staged admission of a long-suspected estrangement was Putin’s latest pragmatic political gambit.

The announcement was a piece of damage control, meant to tie up a loose end that has clouded the former KGB spy’s image and allow him to tackle the six-year third term he started in May 2012 with a clean slate.

“It became necessary to resolve this situation — there were too many rumours swirling around, including that he has sent his wife to a convent,” said Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

The Times, London, reported that by divorcing Lyudmila, Putin risks alienating key elements of his support among conservative Orthodox Christians by becoming the first Russian leader since Peter the Great more than 300 years ago to separate publicly from his wife.

Putin has mixed personal ties with politics in 13 years in power, seeking to strengthen his grip by shuffling his allies around and pushing foes from his path.

Now his wife of 30 years, long absent from his side, is officially out of the picture — almost like a Soviet apparatchik airbrushed from photographs after falling into disfavour.

Putin has championed family values and held out the Russian Orthodox Church as a moral guide for a society he says was set dangerously adrift by the Soviet collapse.

But the rhetoric has rung hollow against a backdrop of speculation he had abandoned Lyudmila, 55, for Olympic rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabayeva, 30, and fathered her child.

Blogger Leonid Volkov believes Putin wanted to erase the image of an unfaithful husband: “I’ve heard taxi divers say it many times: ‘If he’s cheating on his wife, it means he’s deceiving the country,’” he wrote on Twitter.

Some of Putin’s foes praised the decision. Opposition politician Boris Nemtsov said it was a rare show of honesty.

“Political life in Russia just became a bit more human,” media magnate and Putin critic Alexander Lebedev tweeted.

Divorce is widespread in Russia, where many people marry young and the upheaval that followed the collapse of Communism has strained the social fabric.

“When I heard it over the television I was in shock,” said Lyubov Andreyeva, a retired teacher in Moscow. “But at the same time if there is no feeling left and the children are grown up, what is the point of continuing the game?”

“I think the public will understand this decision and Putin will become more popular because everyone will see he is a regular, normal man, he can have family problems, like anybody else,” said Malashenko.

But some Russians said the admission came too late.

“I think the time to do this was long ago because everyone already more or less knew about poor Lyuda, that she had gone insane or been sent to a convent or died,” said Yulia Tsoy, a Muscovite.“It was senseless to continue that circus.”

No Soviet leader or Russian president has divorced, and pro-Kremlin pundits cast the announcement — which the Putins made to a reporter after visiting the ballet in a rare public outing together — as courageous.

Irina, a 45-year-old homemaker in the Moscow suburbs who did not want her last name used, had a different word:“repulsive”.

“This was done in a tacky way: ‘Oh, the ballet was beautiful and I’m dumping my wife’”, she said.