MOSCOW Six months after marrying, Boris Yeltsin's granddaughter has made the Russian president a great grandfather, the Kremlin said. Yeltsin's granddaughter, Yekaterina Okulova, gave birth early on Thursday morning to Alexander, the president's first great grandson, a Kremlin spokeswoman said. Okulova, the daughter of Yeltsin's elder daughter Yelena and Valery Okulov, head of the state flagship airline Aeroflot, was a 19-year-old student at Moscow State University when she married at a private ceremony in January. Her husband has been identified only as a fellow student.

Yeltsin, ill with a severe stomach ulcer at the time, was forced to miss the wedding. The 68-year-old president is now in better health and on summer vacation at a country house outside Moscow. Okulova, called Katya by her family and friends, is said to have an interest in children. A few days after her wedding she told the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper she wanted to be a nursery school teacher.

She is known not to think much of politicians. "Most people in politics don't want to make things better for the country, but for their own businesses and ambitions. I've seen a lot of people like that and...it's not a pretty sight," she told Komsomolskaya Pravda. (Reuter)