Where were you when the war began? What were you doing? You surely remember. Some people scrolled through the news feed in shock, some cried. Some packed their things, called relatives, some said goodbye to them.
Do you remember what you were doing while Putin’s army was wiping Mariupol off the face of the earth? On March 17, in the nearly completely destroyed city, rescuers were searching for survivors beneath the ruins of the drama theater.
That same day, our heroine landed at the Paris airport. Straight from the plane, she headed downtown—to 7 Place Vendôme. This is where the finest hotels and the most expensive boutiques are located. But even among them, one stands out.
A jewelry store with no sign and no display window. You can enter only by personal invitation. Its owner, Joel Arthur Rosenthal, is called the Fabergé of our time. His pieces cost hundreds of thousands and millions of euros. Our heroine goes there to make yet another purchase.
March 23: Kyiv is bombed overnight. Residents of Ukrainian cities dig graves in their yards, burying relatives and neighbors. Our colleague Oksana Baulina, a former employee of the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation), is killed in a missile strike in Kyiv.
Meanwhile, our Paris heroine buys train tickets. Two hours later, she is already in London. Her son lives there. Apparently she just dropped in for a moment, and that same evening she returned to Paris.
For all other Russians, the borders were de facto closed. Every European country had suspended air travel with Russia. On March 25, using Grad and Uragan multiple rocket launchers, the Russian army carried out 55 strikes on Kharkiv.
But that day she is strolling along Rue Saint-Honoré. She goes into Prada and buys €8,000 worth of outfits. France holds a special place in her heart—and it’s not just because of the Paris shops.
Her daughter lives here. On the French Riviera, the whole family vacationed every summer for a month at a time. They even bought a Rolls-Royce there. A special one, just for holidays—it waits for them here in France. And in Moscow, they have another one.
And at first glance, perhaps there seems to be nothing unusual about this story. Yes, there is a war, people are dying horrific deaths, lives are being maimed and destroyed. But there is also the rest of the world, where people live far from all this, where it all feels distant and incomprehensible. By and large, they go on living as they always have. That’s just how it is. If not for one thing.
Our heroine is the wife of the Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation. The wife of a man who helped start this war and bears responsibility for it. One of Shoigu’s closest deputies—Timur Ivanov. Meet Svetlana and Timur Ivanov.
Timur Ivanov has worked at the Ministry of Defense for more than 10 years. Before that, he worked in the government of the Moscow Region, again under Shoigu. But despite his high-ranking position, you most likely know almost nothing about Timur Ivanov.
Some may, of course, remember him for once admiring Hitler’s uniform and cap.
It was Ivanov who was responsible for building the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, as well as Patriot Park itself.
At the Ministry of Defense, he oversees virtually all construction. Military housing complexes? Timur Ivanov. Cadet corps and military academies? Timur Ivanov. Hospitals, kindergartens, military airfields, submarine bases, and even the Vostochny Cosmodrome—Ivanov is constantly inspecting all of it.
And now he is the chief builder of Mariupol—which is something no normal person can even begin to process.
First, their army completely destroyed the city—thousands of bodies, mass graves—and now Ivanov walks around there boasting that the Defense Ministry will build Mariupol residents a swimming pool and an ice rink.
But if you follow high society, then it’s exactly the opposite. In social circles, oddly enough, Timur Ivanov is a well-known figure. Thanks to his wife—an infamous party girl from the 2000s, a staple of celebrity gossip columns, and at one point even a TV host: Svetlana Zakharova. Also known as Svetlana Maniovich. More recently, she has been Svetlana Ivanova, having taken her husband’s surname.
She is, of course, no financier. And she is a rather poor businesswoman. Svetlana’s men—first her first husband, Mikhail Maniovich, and then Timur Ivanov—simply bankroll her expensive hobbies.
First there was a boutique in the Metropol Hotel, and then a store selling clothing and accessories made from exotic skins—python, ostrich, crocodile, lizard. But even that is in the past now: all of those “businesses” went bust.
Svetlana Maniovich—let’s pick one of her surnames for simplicity and stick with it—is the very embodiment of Putin-era glamour. And our paths probably never would have crossed—why would we investigate socialites?—if she had not married a government official in 2009. That is, a person who lives on our tax money, and nothing else.
Svetlana’s divorce from her first husband played out literally in the pages of glossy magazines. Tatler lamented: “Moscow has split into two camps: some support Svetlana, others support her husband.” In interviews, she said she was leaving Maniovich and needed nothing—she was taking only the children, her clothes, and her icons.
And a little over a month later, her ex-husband gave a response interview to Sobchak. He said he had met with Timur Ivanov, had a heart-to-heart with him, tried to talk him out of it: what are you doing, you won’t be able to handle it—Svetlana requires at least $50,000 a month in support.
But Timur Ivanov did manage to shoulder that burden. And what helped him was not business, but his position as the chief builder at the Ministry of Defense.
Timur and Svetlana Ivanov did not exactly hide. It was some new level of brazenness: look, we’re hiding nothing, yes, we’re rich, and we have nothing to be ashamed of. And everyone believed it! Well, if a government official’s family lives like this, then surely it must all be legal. There has to be a limit to such audacity, right? But it turned out there is no limit.
Usually, we observe stories like this from the outside: we look at social media, try to guess, estimate, piece things together. But this time, everything is very different.
We obtained Svetlana Maniovich’s email archive: 8,000 messages spanning 12 years. Bills, house plans, documents for yachts and villas, receipts for antiques and jewelry, party details, and thousands of photographs—we studied all of it carefully, verified it, and are ready to show it to you. We’re about to get a full year’s quota of hardcore luxury and glamour in one go.
What, in your view, should the life of a government official and his unemployed wife look like? Not just any official, but a military one. A man who literally serves his country; who, in the spirit and meaning of that service, is supposed to be a patriot. A man who chose as his calling the defense of Russia.
He is fit and modest. Maybe he lives well, even richly, but not excessively. He rarely appears in public and avoids scandals. Religious, family-oriented, living quietly and without ostentation. That is more or less what it should look like. Got the picture? Now forget it.
Yachts. Helicopters. Saint-Tropez. Rolls-Royces. Diamonds. Parties costing tens of millions of rubles.
Never before have we learned so many details about the life of government officials. Never have we seen it from this close. Let’s take a look.
August 2013. Svetlana Maniovich posts a joking message on behalf of her daughter: “When I was little, I lived in Saint-Tropez, and my toys were champagne corks... In short, I had a difficult childhood.” And it is not really a joke at all.
Every year, starting at least in 2010, Timur Ivanov’s family would leave for the entire month of August... No, not to a dacha to dig in the vegetable garden, but to vacation on the French Riviera. Every year they rented enormous villas there. For example, one like this: five bedrooms, five bathrooms, and two staff rooms.
A month’s rent for it in 2013 cost €120,000.
That same summer, they paid another €90,000 to rent this 37-meter yacht.
2014. In the spring, Timur Ivanov is awarded the medal “For the Return of Crimea.” Alupka and Sudak wait in anticipation of high-ranking guests.
But our Defense Ministry official and his family once again go to Saint-Tropez for a month. They rent another luxury villa with eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms, and a pool. It costs the official’s family €110,000.
To celebrate Timur Ivanov’s birthday, they chartered a sailing yacht for one day and paid €11,000 for the party.
2015. Rental of the 35-meter yacht SOUTH PAW C. The contract, in the name of Svetlana Zakharova, lists the dates and the boarding location—Naples. The rental cost was €56,000.
Then came the traditional August in Saint-Tropez. From photos on Svetlana’s Instagram, we can tell it was Villa Dune.
It has seven bedrooms, four terraces, a pool, a jacuzzi, and, of course, the view.
They paid about €150,000 to rent this villa.
But even there, they missed the motherland. They even had Russian television specially connected at the villa. That cost them €1,990.
In 2016, by decree of the President of Russia, Timur Ivanov was promoted to Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation. You might have thought that this would finally put an end to his annual month-long vacations in a NATO country. Nothing of the sort.
All through August, photos from Saint-Tropez once again fill the Instagram feed of the newly appointed deputy defense minister’s wife.
Timur Ivanov celebrated his birthday there again—25 guests came.
This time they rented Villa Mangueira, with its own helipad, tennis court, and swimming pool. A night there costs from €5,500.
In August 2017, they stayed at the very same villa. In other words, they again spent €170,000 on a month’s rent.
And that same summer they rented a yacht like this, at a cost of €93,000; the contract was made out in the name of their child’s nanny.
In total, over the summer they shelled out €258,000—or 18.5 million rubles—just on vacation. These are not hypothetical estimates; these are bills they were actually issued and actually paid. And that is more than their entire combined annual income for that year.
In 2018, naturally, they also went to Saint-Tropez for a month. But there is one photo worth paying attention to. Svetlana Maniovich is standing next to a Rolls-Royce convertible.
And we had already seen that exact same car back in 2014, with Deputy Minister Ivanov behind the wheel.
Here is the license plate number of that car. It is a fully restored 2001 Rolls-Royce Corniche.
They bought it in 2011 and registered it to their Luxembourg company.
The cost of the holiday car was €120,000. Plus constant repairs and maintenance. In the deputy defense minister’s wife’s email, we found a huge number of bills issued to the Saint-Tropez residents Maniovich and Ivanov: delivery of the car from Luxembourg, replacement of the steering rack, fixing leaks, brake replacement, repainting the entire car, replacement of the windows. The total maintenance bill came to €75,000.
There is a separate point to make here. The €120,000 paid for the vacation Rolls-Royce, at the 2011 exchange rate, was about 5 million rubles. And at the very same time, we have an income statement for Timur Ivanov for that same year—the one he submitted in court, so it does not get any more official than that. According to it, his income was 112,000 rubles a month. 1.3 million a year. And the Rolls-Royce cost five million. The nerve of them.
From 2013 to 2018—the period we examined closely—the Ivanov family spent at least €850,000 on renting villas in Saint-Tropez. Another €250,000 went on yachts, and €200,000 on buying and maintaining the Rolls-Royce. That is €1.3 million spent on summer vacations alone over just six years. But this is how they live all year round.
At her favorite “Fabergé of our time,” the Paris jeweler, Svetlana casually spends hundreds of thousands of euros on a ring or a pair of earrings.
She buys up Dolce & Gabbana runway collections—€153,000 for two dresses.
Here is another €60,000 bill for a dress, and here is Svetlana wearing it.
At their wedding, Modern Talking frontman Thomas Anders performed—for €70,000.
Watches were bought for her husband: a Ulysse Nardin for €25,000 and a Breitling for €36,000.
Their 12-year-old daughter was given a horse named Rajur; Maniovich pays 60,000 rubles a month for its upkeep.
Endless parties, socializing, and fun. Every one of Svetlana Maniovich’s birthdays is an event. In 2018, she celebrated it in Istanbul.
Fifty guests were entertained for three days: excursions, boats, restaurants, musicians. The celebration cost €178,000—13 million rubles.
But we liked her birthday last year even more. It may have been a home celebration, at their country house on Rublyovka (Moscow’s elite suburban area), but it had all the attributes of a grand party.
A lavish party, elegantly dressed guests, songs, dancing, congratulations.
The main star is the family’s close friend—also a government official—Dmitry Peskov. As it turns out, he never misses a single society event.
Do you know what is happening here? It absolutely drives us mad. In the first few shots, Peskov, holding a microphone, gives a toast and congratulates the birthday girl, Svetlana.
The official is dressed modestly, almost casually, but a watch is clearly visible on his wrist. It is not the famous one worth 37 million rubles, of course, but it is the same brand—Richard Mille. One like it costs around 6 million rubles, which is half of his entire annual income.
Then a man appears on the left. It is our deputy defense minister, Timur Ivanov. He reaches toward Peskov’s wrist... and pulls up his cuff to hide the watch. Everyone laughs. They find this very funny, you see?
In an impoverished country, the president’s press secretary owns a watch collection worth an entire apartment block. How did that happen? Well, just like that. It was a gift! Did someone notice? Oh, how awkward—now the deputy defense minister will cover the watch with a cuff. And it never occurs to them that maybe an official should not live like this. They do not think to hide their inexplicable wealth from their friends and drinking companions. From us, yes. We are not supposed to know or see. But together with you, today, we are correcting that.
Do you know what the deputy defense minister’s wife is into besides fashionable parties? Antiques. She spends €85,000 on 19th-century furniture and several statues.
€11,000 on gouaches and a boat-shaped chaise longue.
Another €24,000 on busts, gilded statues, and a Gothic display cabinet.
€7,000 goes toward buying glass birds.
She has had this hobby for many years. For example, in 2018 she took part in a Sotheby’s auction and bought this clock there for €8,500. There is something military about it, isn’t there? Stars, or medals.
But the main reason for the purchase was this: the clock had stood in the bedroom of her favorite designer, Yves Saint Laurent. And now it would stand in the home of the deputy defense minister.
At first glance, it is completely unclear how one family could possibly need so much furniture, so many statues, paintings, and other décor. But we will solve that mystery a little later. For now, we need to clarify one simple thing: do they have the money—the official income—for this kind of life?
The Defense Ministry’s asset declarations have been classified for several years now. But by analyzing the old ones, we can roughly understand the scale. Their combined family income is somewhere around 25 million rubles. Let’s keep that in mind.
Now let’s take one year of spending, for example 2020. Svetlana spent more than 9 million rubles on various antiques—vases, sculptures, chandeliers, furniture. She spent 1.7 million on fabrics; 1 million on bathroom accessories; 3 million rubles on repairs to some boat; and more than 700,000 on the horse’s annual upkeep.
That same year, she bought out her ex-husband’s family’s half of an apartment in an elite residential complex on Povarskaya Street for $1.2 million—90 million rubles.
And endless clothing purchases. And this is only what left traces in the email archive. The real scale is much larger.
Let’s end this somewhat overlong dive into the glamorous world of Putin’s elites with a New Year’s story. The holiday season is coming, after all. So how will you celebrate—going anywhere? We have an option for you, recommended by the deputy defense minister. There is just one catch: it is rather expensive. On January 2, 2021, Timur Ivanov and his wife went on vacation to the Rostov region. For 44,000 rubles a day, they rented this house, called the “Dutchman Palace.”
They spent only three days there, but what three days they were. From the bill issued in the deputy defense minister’s name, we learn that they rented a special fireplace hall for 24,000 rubles, paid another 22,000 to sing karaoke, and spent 230,000 on spa treatments and the bathhouse.
And of course, they ate very well. Not once did they manage to have breakfast for less than 45,000 rubles. Every day, as soon as our vacationers woke up: red caviar, black caviar, blini, croissants, fresh berries, and a couple of bottles of Moët champagne—what kind of breakfast would it be without that? The next day, more of the same: foie gras with berry sauce, morels with poultry mousse, champagne—you get the idea.
For three days of vacation here, the official Timur Ivanov paid 803,000 rubles. In just a couple of days, he blew almost his entire official monthly salary—roughly equivalent to the annual salary of a lieutenant in the Russian armed forces.
There is one more story we need to tell. Look, this is a post from Tatyana Navka’s Instagram. She is in Altai, on vacation, walking near a waterfall, touching rocks, lying alone in the snow, and for some reason putting a piece of ice in her mouth.
A rather strange photo shoot, but then—whoosh!—we see the context: Peskov and Timur Ivanov with Svetlana were there with her.
They too lay on the ice, tossed snow into the air, then ate together outdoors until a helicopter came for them.
And here, take a look at another video from there: lordly amusements. A ceremonial loaf, costumed performers, folk songs—what a scene. Notice how flirtatiously the bear behaves with Tatyana Navka. It hugs her, dances with her, and she is delighted.
There is a logical explanation for that: inside the bear costume is none other than Dmitry Peskov, press secretary to the President of the Russian Federation. What a character.
This, by the way, was yet another glamorous gathering of our best friends. Just not on Rublyovka, but in Altai.
Everything we have seen so many times before: Leps (the singer Grigory Leps), songs, a disco, and heavy drinking. Putin’s officials certainly know how to relax.
We want to show you a few photographs so you can decide for yourselves and form your own impression. Who do these people think they are? What is going on in their heads? The house is covered in icons:
Antique furniture everywhere, samovars, paintings.
They dress up in aristocratic fur coats.
Photo shoots, costumes, kokoshniks (traditional Russian headdresses), old-Russian shawls, churches and monasteries.
In their ears are either diamonds or earrings with double-headed eagles.
They do not think of themselves as government officials. They believe they are the masters of Russia. A new upper class, a new nobility, an elite. And they have taken that idea so far that they began building themselves a real noble estate. In fact, two of them.
The property of Ivanov and Maniovich is classified. Instead of their surnames, the records say “Russian Federation.”
But Ivanov has been an official for so many years that there have already been plenty of investigations, and everyone knows this much: in Zachatyevsky Lane, they rent a 300-square-meter apartment.
In the settlement of Uspenskoye on Rublyovskoye Highway, they built themselves a country house measuring 1,600 square meters. A dacha like that is worth 600 million rubles. But all this is mere crumbs compared with what they really have.
In 2012, Timur Ivanov decided to build a noble estate for his lady Svetlana. Right in the heart of Moscow. Chisty Lane, in the Prechistenka district. One of those neighborhoods where the price of ONE square meter equals the cost of an entire apartment somewhere in Saratov. Not far from here, ten years earlier, the saga of another Defense Ministry official—Serdyukov—was unfolding.
Remember how investigators burst in at 6 a.m. with a search warrant at the home of his lover, Yevgenia Vasilyeva, head of the Defense Ministry’s property relations department? They supposedly found Serdyukov himself there, but what everyone remembered most was the story of the luxury she lived in. All the federal TV channels would not stop exclaiming: my God, an apartment with 13 rooms! 192 square meters!
They found jewelry there, paintings. Truly, those things became symbols of corruption.
But our heroes today, Timur Ivanov and Svetlana Maniovich, would laugh at that. Serdyukov’s wealth is pennies compared with what they have.
At 4 Chisty Lane stands a genuine noble estate, a mansion in the classical style. A large main house, three stories, nearly 1,000 square meters. It was built in 1821 and was known as the Volkonskaya–von Meck city estate.
In 2012, Timur Ivanov bought this building for 600 million rubles. Well, “Timur Ivanov”... Nobility is all very well, but no one has abolished the Russian pretrial detention center on embezzlement charges. So the mansion was registered to a company called “Noble Nest.”
And that company, in turn, was put in the name of Timur Ivanov’s driver—Stanislav Kuznetsov.
For example, here he is parking Ivanov’s and Svetlana Maniovich’s cars using his own phone number. In people’s contact lists, his mobile is saved exactly as: “Stasik, driver for T.V. Ivanov.”
But it is certainly not driver Stasik who is building the nest here. Although the reconstruction and renovation are officially handled by the company “Noble Nest,” all estimates, questions, and bills are sent to Svetlana Maniovich’s email.
In this house, Svetlana is overseeing the renovation of the fireplaces. She receives proposals by email for installing mirrors, and she chooses the wall finishes.
Svetlana chooses the elevator—because what kind of estate is it without an elevator? Absurd.
Svetlana is sent the building’s lighting plan.
A landscaping plan for the estate, approved by Timur Vadimovich.
Even the icons, paintings, and antiques that Svetlana buys on an industrial scale are carefully logged in a spreadsheet and distributed: this was taken from Timur Vadimovich, this was sent for appraisal, and this went to the house on Chisty Lane.
Svetlana’s email contains messages that make it clear what is inside: a spa with a large hammam, a mini-pool, a massage room, and a changing room. In the kitchen there is a chef’s table; downstairs, in the basement, there is a laundry and ironing room, a food storeroom, a storage room for household goods, a safe room, and staff quarters.
There is also a security room—with monitors and a desk for the guards, a bunk bed, and a mini-kitchen. We do not know exactly what they had in mind there, but on the grounds they planned to recreate a separate entrance and a carriage shed. Presumably for their Moscow Rolls-Royce Ghost worth 17 million rubles.
Which, by the way, is also registered to the company of that same driver, Stasik.
That same company also recently bought a black G-Wagen for 20 million rubles.
Now the estate, at least from the outside, looks completely finished. The façade has been restored, the bas-reliefs replaced, and there is even a space left, apparently, for a family coat of arms.
What is especially infuriating in this story is the kitschy patriotism. All these faux-Russian photo shoots, shawls, icons, Orthodoxy.
Here is Svetlana Maniovich writing in a post that only she knows how to love the motherland. And everyone who is not with her simply hates Russia’s greatness. And to reinforce this patriotism, the photo includes a little birch tree, a mushroom, and Svetlana herself, modestly draped in an Hermès scarf.
We understand everything, of course... But have some shame, Svetlana Alexandrovna. For the past 20 years and up to the present day, Svetlana Maniovich, the wife of the Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, has been a citizen of... Israel. Her children are citizens of Israel as well. All of this can be verified using the leaked database of all Israeli voters that surfaced several years ago.
Here is their address in Tel Aviv:
Until 2021, Svetlana Maniovich and her former husband were owners of this apartment.
For many years, as the wife of the deputy defense minister, she filed asset declarations, and not once anywhere did she mention that she owned an apartment in Israel. This is an egregious violation of the law. For this alone, Timur Ivanov should have been removed from office immediately.
Putting on a kokoshnik (a traditional Russian headdress) and beads is patriotism now? Ivanov’s son from his first marriage lives in Mexico.
Maniovich’s daughter from her first husband, Alexandra, lives in Paris.
The 19-year-old son, Mikhail, whom our Ivanov has been raising since early childhood, is not in the trenches near Bakhmut right now — he is in England, studying at a university there.
Not one of their adult children lives in Russia. But they did name their youngest daughter Praskovya. And there is daddy, dressed in military uniform, in a Rublyovka mansion worth 600 million rubles, giving her Tiffany jewelry for her third birthday. There it is — Putin-style patriotism. Take a good look. This is what they are now asking you to die for.
Ivanov and Maniovich know they are breaking the law. That is why houses are registered in drivers’ names, Rolls-Royces are put under the names of various companies, and yachts are ordered in the nanny’s name. There is an entire infrastructure for this — special companies and people who pay for the things it would be awkward for a deputy minister to pay for personally.
Even jewelry from Svetlana’s favorite jewelry house is not paid for by Svetlana herself. In 2019, her American friend paid a bill of €150,000 for her. And then she reimbursed him.
In 2020, the story repeats itself: at the same store, Svetlana picks out $400,000 worth of jewelry (25.5 million rubles). She writes a plaintive letter saying she is having trouble making transfers from her personal account.
So the amount was paid for her in three installments by three unknown offshore companies.
And most importantly: the bills for construction and renovations — both at their Rublyovka country house and at the mansion in Chisty Lane — are not paid by Maniovich and Ivanov themselves either. They have special people for that. By an astonishing coincidence, those same people make billions from Defense Ministry contracts.
Look, here is a contract for the delivery of marble to the Rublyovka country house. Only for some reason, it is not Ivanov or Maniovich who pays, but a company called Albatros. And yet the contract is sitting in Svetlana’s email. Fine, Albatros is Albatros — who knows.
Here is another marble delivery, this time to the mansion in Chisty Lane. The bill is paid by LLC “OSS,” or in full, “Oboronspetsstroy.” And that sounds much worse: why exactly would a company called Oboronspetsstroy be paying for marble for the deputy defense minister?
And these are not the only bills they paid. Here, Oboronspetsstroy pays for a water-protection threshold. And here, for a storm drain and a cast-iron grate. For some reason, all of this is sent to Svetlana Maniovich.
The explanation is simple. Both of these firms belong to one informal group of companies that profits from Defense Ministry contracts. Albatros was founded by Dmitry Khavronin, who now owns the company Olympcitystroy.
And Oboronspetsstroy belongs to two current employees of Olympcitystroy. The same people are everywhere.
And this Olympcitystroy is already a major Defense Ministry contractor. They built a Suvorov military school in Tver, a cadet corps building in Omsk, a naval academy in Murmansk, a COVID hospital in St. Petersburg, and military medical centers.
We found that in just the past couple of years, Olympcitystroy has received more than 65 billion rubles through classified state contracts from Defense Ministry structures. And they transfer part of that money to Oboronspetsstroy as a subcontractor.
And right now, this group of companies continues to make billions from building apartment blocks in Mariupol. They bombed and destroyed it themselves, and now they profit from it.
Here is Timur Ivanov walking around Mariupol with Fomin, co-owner of Olympcitystroy, inspecting the construction.
Here he is presenting a medal to that same Fomin and his partner Khavronin.
Since construction began in Mariupol alone, these people have already made more than 17 billion rubles. And part of that money, as we learned, will go toward paying the Ivanov family’s personal bills: marble, building materials, whatever else they may need.
And toward one more very important and very secret project for the deputy defense minister.
Every respectable nobleman, besides a kokoshnik and a city mansion, is also supposed to have a solid country estate — complete with servants and sleigh rides across his lands in winter. And our heroes recently turned their attention to that as well.
They chose a stunning location: Tver Region, a huge forested plot right on the bank of the Volga. Preparations began at the end of 2020. Timur Ivanov personally visited the construction site, choosing the shape and placement of the house.
Svetlana receives technical plans from the architect for the main house and two guest houses. The room sketches are coordinated with her as well.
Although it is obvious who commissioned the construction, by established tradition the official’s family will not register anything in their own names. The plot belongs to LLC Volzhsky Bereg.
And that company, in turn, is owned by the already familiar Oboronspetsstroy.
Now let’s see what all this looks like in real life.
We are in Tver Region, in the village of Pankratovo.
We are approaching the main house — it has an area of 2,900 square meters, and it is a true Russian estate with two side wings.
We know exactly what is inside: in the basement level there are two food storage rooms, a clothing storage room, and four furniture storage rooms — clearly a repository for antiques. On the first floor there is a 90-square-meter fireplace room, a 100-square-meter billiards room, a dining room with a serving pantry, and the most mysterious room of all — a “hooligan drawing room.”
We had never heard of such a thing, but the deputy defense minister has one. Perhaps that is where Timur Ivanov, in sweatpants, stops his guests, asks what neighborhood they are from, why he has never seen them here before, and takes their loose change and mobile phones.
On the upper floor of the estate there is the master bedroom, a 40-square-meter bathroom, and two walk-in closets each about the size of a one-room apartment.
There is also a backup walk-in closet on this floor — in case all of Svetlana’s things do not fit into the two main ones. There is also an 85-square-meter living room and a 56-square-meter studio for Svetlana. This floor is intended for the owners only.
Guests, meanwhile, will stay in the two wings connected to the house by galleries. Each has four bedrooms.
The total area of the grounds is 19 hectares.
You can get from Moscow to these beautiful places by helicopter, or even by motorboat, since the company Volzhsky Bereg owns one; with customs clearance and delivery, it costs 21 million rubles. There is only one photograph of this vessel online, and it shows a woman who looks very much like Svetlana Maniovich.
When the war began, Svetlana Maniovich left for Paris.
In March of this year, at the very time when the most horrific, unimaginable crimes were being committed under her husband’s leadership — Mariupol, Bucha, the shelling of peaceful cities — Svetlana was spending her time shopping and relaxing, in comfort and safety. Far from Putin and his “Russian world.”
Nevertheless, their old life — with villas in Saint-Tropez, expensive boutiques, and endless travel — was put at risk. In October of this year, unimaginably late but still, Timur Ivanov was added to the European sanctions list.
But Svetlana was not. A few months earlier, in June, they had formally finalized a divorce.
There was none of the property division that would normally accompany such a situation. No one fought over the children. This time, the divorce was not discussed in the pages of *Tatler*. We were unable to find anything indicating a real separation between Ivanov and Maniovich. Quite the opposite: shortly before the divorce, she changed her surname to Ivanova.
And the main goal was achieved: Svetlana Maniovich was not placed under sanctions. At the time we were recording this investigation, she was in Paris, spending time there with her daughter and spending money in her favorite boutiques.
Money that her formally ex-husband stole through Defense Ministry contracts and from the war in Ukraine.
Despite the divorce, Svetlana Manionich should be immediately added to every possible sanctions list. Their secret accounts and companies should be frozen. All the people — Americans, Europeans — who pay their bills, help them hide assets, and launder money for them must be held accountable.
It is very important that you help us spread this video and this text. Show it to those who, for some insane reason, support Putin’s war. To those who believe the propaganda and are ready to kill innocent people. Are you ready to die for Timur Ivanov’s Rolls-Royces? For dresses his wife owns that cost as much as your apartment? For their vacations in Saint-Tropez?
Today we have shown and proven it: you were robbed. And not just by Ivanov and Maniovich. All these brazen officials and United Russia party members are the same. They lie, they steal, and they celebrate without end, gloating over how cleverly they pulled it all off while you noticed nothing.
Send the link to our video to your friends and acquaintances, share it. Freedom for Alexei Navalny!
P.S. In the email, we found a very interesting document. It was sent by The Italian Sea Group. This is the very company that services Vladimir Putin’s yacht, the “Scheherazade.” The firm specializes in building superyachts. And this letter says that Svetlana Maniovich is a very important client for the company — important not only to them, but to the entire Italian economy.
The document is dated to the very end of 2021, literally just a couple of months before the war. Judging by this letter, the deputy defense minister was planning to build himself a superyacht in Italy. This letter is, of course, not enough for a full investigation, but it is more than enough for us to file a complaint with the Italian law enforcement authorities: what exactly is a sanctioned official doing there, and why is he considered so important to the Italian economy? We will keep you updated on what comes of it!