German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his wife Doris have adopted a 3-year-old Russian girl, German newspapers reported on Tuesday.
The Schroeders adopted Victoria from a children's home in St. Petersburg and picked her up several weeks ago, Bild and Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported.
A government spokesman declined to comment, saying: "The government press office doesn't comment on the Chancellor's private matters."
Schroeder's fourth wife Doris Schroeder-Koepf, who used to work for Bild newspaper, has a 13-year-old daughter from a previous relationship who lives with them.
St. Petersburg is the home town of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom Schroeder has a close relationship.
Doris, 41, has been involved in a charity that cares for young people in St. Petersburg and has given Schroeder, 60, a greater sense of family life since they married in 1997, Bild said. He has fathered no children himself.
Schroeder would have had trouble adopting a child in Germany because of his age. German adoption rules state that babies and small children tend not to be given to parents much older than 35 to 40 years.
Bild, Germany's best-selling newspaper, carried the story on its front page, calling it "the most moving story of the year".
It follows weeks of negative headlines about Schroeder's welfare reforms and confusion about the impact of jobless benefit cuts coming into force next January.
Last Friday, Schroeder made headlines when he paid his first visit to the grave of his soldier father in a Romanian village.
Schroeder never knew his father Fritz, who was killed in 1944 as the Soviet Red Army advanced on German positions towards the end of World War Two.
The Kremlin said the Schroeders had gone through all the necessary legal procedures to adopt Victoria, who was feeling well in her new home.