Eleven-year-old grandson of Rear-Admiral in Putin's navy still hasn't been told that his mother is dead after she was killed when she hit her head while hanging topless out of a car

The 11-year-old son of a woman who died after being hit by a road sign while hanging out of a car window still does not know his mother is dead.    

Glamorous Natalia Borodina, 35, died after flaunting her almost naked body out of the passenger window of a car during a holiday in the Dominican Republic.

The excruciating footage went viral, showing her writhing in the car and thrusting her upper body out of the vehicle.

But back in Russia, her ex-husband Alexandr Palagushkin, 37, an academic who had studied in London, is battling to be given custody of their son Ermak, 11, who - contrary to earlier reports - was not on vacation with his mother when she was killed.

The boy has not been told of his mother's death.

Palagushkin, 37 said he and his father Boris Palagushkin, 58 - a rear admiral in Putin's naval reserve - were now fighting to keep their child out of a grim Russia orphanage.

'The childcare people have already called,' Palagushkin told Ren TV.

'It's helpful that my father is a rear admiral.

They have already said: "Do you know the mother is dead? Why is the child not with the father?"

'So, if I don't take him now, they will get him.

'And even with my father's connections, it will take me time to get him out of some orphanage.'

Palagushkin said he had met with his ex-wife, who reportedly worked as an estate agent in Cannes, France, in Europe.

Other stories claim she assisted with visa access for Russians.

'I have no idea what she was doing,' said her ex-husband, an academic who works in Siberia.

'I live in Novosibirsk, I am a senior tutor. And my father is deputy dean of Novosibirsk State University of Water Transport.

'He is a rear-admiral. 

'She told me she provided visa support for Russian tourists in Cannes.'

When the mother was killed, his son Ermak was in the care of Yulia Artemova, 42, Natalia's sister, in the Russian city of Voronezh.

Palagushkin was rushing there to be reunited with his child.

Police have now identified the road sign that killed Ms Borodina and detained her 32-year-old companion Ivanna Boirachuk, from Ukraine.