What do propagandists say every time we talk about Putin’s lavish palaces and wineries? They say it all belongs to someone else, not Putin. Because, they tell us, it simply can’t be his. Putin and palaces and luxury—what do those have to do with each other? That sort of thing just doesn’t interest him.
Year after year, out of thin air, they mold the image of a man untouched by material values. He is an ascetic. He has nothing but work and, occasionally, as a rare exception, a walk in the woods to pick mushrooms with fellow pensioner Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu.
This is a key part of a vast propaganda system. It has many different elements: here he is a brilliant strategist and geopolitical mastermind; there he is a tough leader everyone fears; elsewhere he is just one of the guys, telling jokes and wisecracks. And of course, he is so close to ordinary people. Only Putin understands Russians.
And every time we are amazed—this is outright lying. Putin loves luxury. He demands luxury and does not know how to live any other way. He himself, his relatives, his children, his lovers, and the relatives and children of those lovers are literally showered with ultra-expensive real estate, Gazprom shares, money from state companies, and all the other trappings of the extremely rich.
But you can’t fool everyone forever. Geopolitics is all well and good, but people have been promised for years that wages and pensions would go up, and the only thing that goes up is the retirement age. On TV they hear about the genius Putin, and then they step outside and see elderly people fighting over expired food because they do not even have enough money for decent groceries.
And you have to admit: when someone asks you to be patient and tighten your belt while he himself lives like a sultan or an emperor, tightening your belt is the last thing you feel like doing. What you want is to go up to him and say: “You’ve been president for 20 years and in power for 30—look what you’ve done to the country, you geopolitical genius.”
So they invented for us the image of “poor” Putin: a modest apartment, a Niva car, and a Skif trailer.
And his press secretary, Peskov, wearing a watch worth 37 million rubles (about $500,000), repeats: “Putin wears identical shirts, fashion does not interest him at all—in fact, food does not interest him either. Putin eats the simplest food. He does not even have hobbies—only reading.”
So there he sits all day in plain shirts, perched on the edge of a chair, hungry, reading history books. That is the image they want to project.
But now we are going to expose this lie. In a very simple and logical way. If you do not believe that the Gelendzhik palace with its “aqua disco” belongs to Putin, if you think it is an anti-Russian provocation and really belongs to Rotenberg while the president has nothing to do with it—fine. Then let us go to a place where Putin definitely does have something to do with it: his official residence.
Putin has four official residences assigned to him—for living, working, and отдых. In reality there are more, but these are the ones everyone knows about: the Kremlin, Novo-Ogaryovo (on Rublyovka, outside Moscow), Bocharov Ruchey (in Sochi), and Valdai (in the Novgorod region).
Putin spends all his time in these places. We are often shown official footage: the gilded halls of the Kremlin, formal events, even tours of Novo-Ogaryovo, meetings with foreign leaders, and workouts in Sochi. And... wait a second. We know absolutely nothing about the fourth official residence.
You have all heard it many times: Putin is in Valdai, Putin is in Valdai. But here is the remarkable thing—they never film him there. It is his favorite official country residence and, apparently for that very reason, the most secret one.
And since there is no question here of “whose is it,” all that remains is to find out how Vladimir Vladimirovich officially spends his days in the country, how he relaxes—ascetically or not—and, most importantly, how much it costs us.
Look here: this plot is 150 hectares (1.5 square kilometers / 3.7 acres) of land on the northern part of the island. It contains utility buildings—warehouses, garages, hangars, and small guest cottages. The land officially belongs to the Russian Federation and is held in permanent use by the Federal Protective Service. Everything is in proper order, at least on paper.
But this southern part of the peninsula, 100 hectares between Lakes Uzhin and Valdai, belongs to Yuri Kovalchuk, Putin’s chief financier, the sponsor of palaces and girlfriends. This is the part where the actual residence is located—the dacha, bathhouses, and other buildings for entertainment and leisure.
And here is the trick: Kovalchuk, one of the richest men in Russia, leases this part of the peninsula to the Presidential Property Management Department. In other words, we pay the rent for yet another Putin dacha out of the state budget—not to just anyone, but to Putin’s best friend, whose fortune is estimated in the billions of dollars.
How much do we pay? On what terms? And why, exactly? There are no official answers to any of these questions. How did he get this land in the first place, and why was Putin’s residence built on private property? Simply because in the final months of his very first presidential term, in 2003, Putin started thinking about the future. It is nice to keep a dacha for yourself. He could not register it in his own name, so he put it in a friend’s name instead. Exactly the way he likes it: a lake, a cooperative (a reference to the Ozero dacha cooperative tied to Putin’s inner circle).
But of course we looked into it, and now we will show you where Putin spends his quarantine days and where he invites his favorite guests.
By Putin’s standards, the main house is fairly modest, but it is hidden very carefully. There are no photos of it online at all. Let us fix that.
A four-story mansion, 3,500 square meters (about 37,700 square feet). Balconies, terraces, a grand staircase with a fountain. These photos are quite old; the grounds have since been landscaped and trees planted.
There is plenty more of interest on the grounds. For example, on the shore there is a Chinese pavilion—a kind of guest house. It was built by the same company, UK Kredo, that is now responsible for construction at the palace in Praskoveevka.
There are also charming wooden cottages, bathhouses, gazebos, a restaurant building, and even a separate beer restaurant. There is a children’s playground too, with a huge yellow-and-blue sun and slides...
And of course, there is a private church. The website of the Russian Orthodox Church mentions that it is called “Vladimirskaya.”
In Kirov, they even built an exact copy of this chapel—though in a somewhat more restrained color scheme.
At first glance, a residence is just a residence. Novo-Ogaryovo, the one in Sochi, this one—it is all the same thing: a state dacha. But Valdai is hidden for a reason. Because here, 350 meters (about 1,150 feet) from the main house, lies Putin’s main Valdai secret, the temple of his asceticism: a building twice the size of the residence itself. Nearly 7,000 square meters (about 75,300 square feet). Three floors, two of them underground.
What is it? A helicopter hangar? Storage for identical shirts and a few ties? Some vitally necessary technical facility for the staff? No, friends. It is a spa complex, also leased by the Presidential Property Management Department. A personal beauty and self-care center for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
And here are its floor plans.
Just the way we like it. Every room, every wall—everything is here for us to examine. We are paying for it, after all. We have a right to look. You can download these plans here, so do not deny yourself the pleasure.
What does an ascetic lifestyle look like to you? Do you think an ascetic goes to a spa at all? How exactly do asceticism and a cryochamber go together—a place where you are rejuvenated and “healed” with extreme cold, minus 110 degrees Celsius? Or, say, mud therapy?
Does an ascetic visit a float pool? A float pool is a large tub or capsule filled with highly salted water, so you lie in it and float on the surface as if weightless. All your muscles relax, you sink into a meditative state—it is supposedly very helpful for relieving stress and tension.
There is a fully equipped cosmetology room, with a dentist’s office next door. Across the hall you can undergo lymphatic pressotherapy, and nearby there are hydro-massage baths.
In the other wing, things are more traditional: a 25-meter swimming pool, surrounded by hot-and-cold plunge pools, just like the ones in Gelendzhik and Novo-Ogaryovo. A hammam, a sauna—it is all here too.
But the epicenter of this asceticism lies elsewhere. It is the massage suite.
There is a platform for Thai massage here. A massage chair lit by a special infrared lamp (that chair alone costs more than half a million rubles—over $5,000). And in the middle of the room, a bed screened off by a sheer canopy. We can even assess the interior design here.
On one wall there is a ceramic panel with orchids, and on the other a panel with the less elegant name “ziguli.” Beautiful.
If you go upstairs by the spiral staircase, you arrive in a 200-square-meter hall (about 2,150 square feet). Upstairs there is also a bedroom and a serving room... there is no kitchen because the serving room has a special food lift. And then there is a gigantic 500-square-meter living room (about 5,380 square feet). Apparently with a very impressive aquarium, since the utility room for that aquarium alone takes up 13 square meters.
And let us quickly run through the basement level as well. These are clearly technical rooms and staff quarters. We find the most eagerly awaited ones: a service room for the salt plunge pool and a separate utility room for mud therapy. A small room with shelving—we have seen something like that before. And here is the secure communications room, in case anyone still has doubts about who exactly built this “ascetic” spa complex for himself.
In addition to this spa complex, the Presidential Property Management Department leases around 80 buildings, large and small. And until now, no one knew for how much or on what terms. Even now, the records from Rosreestr (Russia’s state property registry) are in a disgraceful state: building names have been deleted, lease terms mixed up, and the information has not been updated for years.
The last mention in public procurement records dates back to 2009. From it we learn that, in addition to the Chinese and Russian cottages, the residence grounds also include bathhouses, a sauna, a stable, a golf course, a mini-golf course, and a VIP restaurant with a screening room, bowling alley, billiards room, and even... a mini-casino. We probably would not have believed it back then, but after discovering a private casino in Gelendzhik, finding one here is no surprise.
All of this had already been built there by 2009, and knowing the appetites of the “national leader,” the number of VIP saunas, VIP restaurants, and VIP golf facilities only multiplied over the next 10 years.
And we have little doubt that this is Putin’s favorite residence. This is where his favorite performers are brought for private VIP concerts. Remember the story of Natalia Vetlitskaya, who along with Leps and Kirkorov was brought to a closed party for six people dressed in costumes from the era of Catherine the Great? That happened here.
Or take this account by saxophonist and Putin confidant Igor Butman. He was driven to Valdai in traffic police escort cars, and there they sat in some little hut on chicken legs, where Putin treated him to moonshine. There it is—that little hut—in the photo.
In an unexpected place—in the documents of a bodyguard for former Ukrainian president Yanukovych—you can find mention of a secret meeting with Putin in Valdai during the Maidan protests. The presidents were entertained there by performers Elena Vaenga and Gazmanov. That same day, the Radio Chanson website published an interview with Vaenga “straight from the forests of Karelia.” She apparently saw forests, but did not quite get the geography right.
Silvio Berlusconi was also lucky enough to visit Valdai, where he and Putin flew in a seaplane. So the Valdai residence is a true personal dacha: journalists are not allowed in, and no official meetings are held there. This is where Putin relaxes.
And in keeping with Putin’s well-established tradition, just as with the palace in Gelendzhik, the people who manage this dacha—that is, the chief keepers of Putin’s secrets—are generously rewarded with both money and positions. For 20 years, the man responsible for this dacha on behalf of the Federal Protective Service was Valery Pikalyov. Recently, Pikalyov was appointed vice governor of St. Petersburg and head of the governor’s administration.
One main question remains: how much does it cost? It turned out to be very easy to figure out. Yuri Kovalchuk owns all of this through his company Prime. We checked and found everything this Prime company owns and where its income comes from, and learned that apart from lease payments from the Presidential Property Management Department, it has no significant income.
The company does nothing except lease out this residence. Now let us look at Prime’s financial statements.
Revenue for 2019 was 312 million rubles; revenue for 2018 was 304 million. Over the past 10 years, the company has made 2.7 billion rubles. There are three years left in this Putin term. That means we will throw away at least another billion rubles on this dacha just in payments to the Kovalchuks.
We understand why a president needs a residence. A house, a dacha, a whole complex of dachas—fine. In different parts of the country—sure, the country is enormous. It is also clear that these are budget expenses: presidents change, state dachas remain. But what we absolutely do not understand is why we are paying for Putin to have personal spa complexes built, complete with massage and cosmetology rooms, cryochambers, and float pools.
Why should billions of rubles in taxpayer money go toward relaxation treatments, mud therapy, and rejuvenation procedures for one man? And most importantly, why is this money not going just anywhere, but being paid out as rent to Putin’s billionaire best friend?
This does not even belong to the state! One day Putin will leave power, and the other residences, which have been on the state’s books since Soviet times, will remain. But this one... here the state owns only half the land, and not the part with the residence on it. Everything else belongs to Kovalchuk. Three hundred million rubles a year are being thrown to the wind so Putin has somewhere to lie in weightlessness and somewhere to invite performers.
This investigation will not be shown on television. On television they will show how modest Putin outsmarts everyone yet again, how he travels ascetically around Russia admiring wooden handicrafts. Two Putin decades have passed under the banner of this hypocrisy. The Putin of television has nothing to do with the real Putin. It is very important to show this video to those who watch television and believe in that version of Putin.
Alexei Navalny should be here in this studio instead of us. But he is in a penal colony, on hunger strike. Putin had Navalny unlawfully imprisoned for telling the truth about Putin’s corruption, lies, and hypocrisy. We will go on telling that truth.
We urge you to join us in demanding Alexei’s release. Do not stay on the sidelines. Our silence puts his life at risk.
Freedom for Alexei Navalny.
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