AKIPRESS.COM - A Russian who claimed to be the oldest in the world at 123 has passed away, it was announced today, The Sun reports.

Tanzilya Bisembeyeva was born two months before the coronation of tragic last tsar Nicholas II and lived during three centuries, it is claimed.

“She died peacefully, she was buried in the family cemetery,” said Nurgali Baitemirov, the senior official in her district in Astrakhan region, reported Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

“The whole village came to see her depart on her last journey.”

Her claim to be the oldest woman in her country was recognised by the Russian Book of Records and evidently the Russian government.

If true, it meant she was the oldest person on the planet.

The secret of her long life, surviving the upheavals of the Russian revolution, when she was already 21, and the Soviet collapse, as well the tyranny of Stalin, was "optimism and hard work" — along with drinking kefir, or fermented milk.

Locals say she was more than 100 before she went to see a doctor.