A few months ago, I saw this photo on Twitter of a man standing in front of a 6-meter (about 20-foot) fence, and my first thought was: we need to see what’s behind it.
Basically, everyone in the lovely town of Plyos already knows what it is — Medvedev’s dacha (country estate). And not just in Plyos: newspapers have written about it, and even the Wikipedia article about this place says: Medvedev’s dacha is here.
A 6-meter (about 20-foot) fence is that kind of thing: it doesn’t just keep people out, it also attracts the curious.
We’re exactly that kind of curious, and we want to know. What’s there, behind the fence of the dacha belonging to the lead candidate of the United Russia party? How much did it cost? Who paid for it? And why hide it so carefully if it isn’t an official state residence?
What we found: a gigantic residence. The 2 hectares reported in the media are nonsense — it’s 80 hectares. That’s like three Kremlins or 30 Red Squares.
In terms of layout, it looks very much like something like Novo-Ogaryovo (the official country residence of Russia’s top leader) from satellite: the residence of the “top official” is enclosed by an inner fence, while within the outer perimeter there are staff hotels, vehicle depots, and so on.
Three helicopter pads (like Putin’s in Gelendzhik), secure communications towers, and according to the documents, several underground structures.
We have no doubt that this is not some oligarch’s dacha, but Medvedev’s dacha specifically. Especially since he is there often. If you see mushrooms on Instagram,
check the geotag — it’ll be from there.
And here’s the most interesting part: this was built not just with oligarch money, but with oligarch money that had supposedly been donated to charity.
Shareholders in the gas giant NOVATEK, Mikhelson and Simanovsky, contributed 33 billion rubles to the charter fund of the DAR charitable foundation (whose supervisory board was headed by one of Medvedev’s former university classmates), and the foundation used that money to start building several strange closed-off properties, including this one. A detailed description of the scheme, with documents, is here.
The next time you read online about people across the country trying to raise a million rubles for a sick child’s treatment, remember this “charity.” With this kind of money, it would be possible to pay for the necessary operations for absolutely everyone who needs them.
What else can you call that?
In our new video, we show everything as it is and call things by their proper names:
I have the usual request for help spreading this around (they won’t show it on TV), but with an extra note.
The entire internet is flooded with posts about the election: it’s our duty, it’s our chance, fight United Russia, and so on.
You personally are unlikely to be able to do anything more useful in terms of fighting United Russia than sharing this video. Post it everywhere, and especially where the people still live who continue to believe in that party with Medvedev at the top of its candidate list.
P.S. Subscribe to our channel. If you like what ACF (the Anti-Corruption Foundation) does, support our work with your hard-earned money.