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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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A national go-kart contest in which the grandson of Vladimir Putin is a competitor has been shifted from its location in Crimea after explosions at a nearby military base.
The three-day Russian Karting Championships were due to start on September 9 in Yevpatoria in the west of the peninsula but will now take place in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, said independent Russian-language news outlet Current Time.
The new location is listed on the website of race organizer Karting Russia, which Newsweek has contacted for comment.
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Yevpatoria is around 13 miles from the Saki military airfield, where a series of explosions took place at a Russian airbase in Crimea on August 9, which reportedly damaged aircraft and nearby houses.
Among those taking part in the go-kart race is 10-year-old Roman Faassen, who is the reported son of the eldest daughter of Putin, Maria Vorontsova. In 2008, she married a Dutch businessman, Jorrit Faassen, although Radio Free Europe reported in 2022 that they are believed to have divorced.
Roman has taken part in five of the six Russian Karting Championships races and is in 28th place in the overall standings. His alleged status as the Russian president's grandson and news of his participation in the go-kart championships have been reported by Ukrainian media.
However, Putin has always been tight-lipped about his family, and the identities of his daughters and wider family have never been publicly acknowledged.
Kept out of public view by the Kremlin, his children with his ex-wife, Lyudmila, are believed to be Vorontsova, 37, a pediatric endocrinologist, and Katerina Tikhonova, 35, a scientist and former acrobatic dancer.
In 2017, Putin said during his annual TV phone-in with Russians: "I have grandchildren. They live normal lives... I want them to grow up to be normal people.
"If I mention ages and names, they would be identified and never left alone," the Russian leader, now 69, said.
In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, where there have been a number of explosions since the start of the war on February 24. These are believed to have been carried out by Ukrainian forces.
The British Ministry of Defence said on August 12 that at least five Su-24 fighter-bombers and three Su-30 jets were either destroyed or damaged in the Saki blasts, although Russia denied this.
Ukrainian officials stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility for the explosions, but Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to the president of Ukraine, said they were caused either by Ukrainian-made long-range weapons or by guerrillas from the country.
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