What is Vladimir Putin’s biggest secret? The palace? Or maybe offshore accounts? A huge yacht safely hidden away in Europe? Or money in a secret account at his personal bank? No, his most closely guarded secret is something else.
Think about it: for almost 23 years, Putin has been the country’s top official, the most famous person in Russia. Every camera is pointed at him, all attention is on him—it would seem he should be completely transparent.
But we know no-thing about the private life of the man who has ruled our country for nearly a quarter of a century. He decides our fate, sends young men to war, throws people in prison. But does he himself have children? How many, and where do they live? Is he married, and to whom? It’s insane—we don’t even know whether our country has a first lady. Where Putin’s family should be, there is a gaping hole, a void.
Media outlets tried to write about it—and those outlets were shut down.
He was asked questions. And what did we hear in response? “Don’t stick your flu-ridden noses into it.” Even the most cautious attempts by loyal journalists to find out—well, maybe he has grandchildren?—ended with his trademark rudeness: “Don’t grunt here.”
What is he hiding? Why has such an important part of a public politician’s life been erased and classified? What could possibly happen, even in theory, if Putin came out and said: here is my wife, here is who waits for me at home, here are my daughters, sons, and grandchildren—they love me and support me.
Putin’s voters would probably even like that—conservative values, family, “spiritual bonds” (a Kremlin slogan about traditional values). But there’s one big catch. The moment we learn their names, we also learn how much they stole. How billions of rubles from the budget, from state companies, and from oligarchs were spent to provide a royal life for Putin’s lovers and relatives. And that’s not very conservative, is it? Mistresses, children born out of wedlock, palaces, penthouses, and villas—what happened to your “traditional values,” Vladimir Vladimirovich?
After his formal divorce from Lyudmila 10 years ago, after those awkward remarks in a theater foyer following a ballet about a marriage that had long ceased to exist, we were asked to believe the idea that Putin was married to Russia. But it turned out to be much simpler.
Today we’re going to talk about Putin’s main secret—Alina Kabaeva. To be honest, we’re in a rather absurd position. Because let’s face it: the whole country, probably the whole world by now, already knows that Putin and Kabaeva are together.
They have children, a family—call it what you like. Kabaeva ended up under every sanction because of it. But there is no actual proof. Everyone knows, but where that knowledge comes from is unclear.
We are absolutely certain that this is a matter of public importance, and that it was turned into a tightly guarded secret for a reason. Not because Putin wants quiet domestic happiness or avoids personal topics, but because half the country has already been transferred into the names of Alina Kabaeva and the people close to her. She lives like a true tsarina, ruler of the Russian land—not like the wife of a government official.
Today we’re talking about a new investigation by the outlet Proekt. It is the final installment in their “Iron Masks” series. We strongly recommend that you both read and watch it without delay—it is superb journalism. Extremely important and necessary. Proekt tackled two of Putin’s biggest secrets: they found his slush fund, his personal offshore wallet, from which purchases are paid for the people closest to Putin and for Putin himself. And they showed who those close associates are. After reading their material, we realized we had something to add to the investigation: over ten years of closely and carefully studying Putin’s crimes, our archives have accumulated a great deal of interesting and exclusive material that confirms and expands on Proekt’s findings.
Now we move to Valdai. This is where Putin’s main official residence is located—effectively his primary home. He spends most of the year here and in Sochi; this is his home.
These grounds are now protected by a personal Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft missile and gun system installed nearby.
But two years ago, when we filmed this video, as you can see, nothing prevented us from filming the residence in detail. This is the main house—we’ll come back to it.
Here is a mind-blowing spa complex covering 7,000 square meters.
There are also various little mansions, cottages, and restaurants on the grounds.
And of course, a church. It bears the name “Vladimirskaya.”
In short, this is Putin’s personal favorite dacha (country estate), completely hidden from prying eyes, where Vladimir Vladimirovich can do whatever he pleases in total privacy.
And this, as Proekt found, is where Putin settled his beloved: 39-year-old former gymnast Alina Kabaeva.
When we investigated this residence two years ago, we noticed that a very conspicuous playground had recently appeared on the grounds (something tells us it has since been repainted).
And one might have guessed that all these swings, slides, and other children’s amusements were not added to Putin’s finished dacha for no reason. That someone had been settled here, and that someone had small children. But proving it turned out to be quite difficult.
Look how cleverly Proekt’s journalists approached this. They examined recent photos of Alina Kabaeva and noticed that she is constantly surrounded by the same women.
Here is a photo from the “Legends of Sport” concert: Kabaeva herself is in the middle, and to her right is Olesya Fedina.
Here she is again next to Kabaeva’s sister, Leysan. On the right in the same photo is Ekaterina Golovacheva, who is also of interest to us. Because Fedina and Golovacheva are Alina’s cousins, the daughters of her aunt.
Here is another photo. To Kabaeva’s left are two women: the one in the black T-shirt is Yulia Nazarova, Kabaeva’s personal assistant.
Her sister Anna Nazarova also works at Kabaeva’s foundation. Here they are together at the “Alina” rhythmic gymnastics festival.
The last assistant is Elena Erkhan, pictured here in a blue shirt.
All these women are not just Alina’s friends. Each of them is formally employed by companies close to Putin and is paid there to accompany Kabaeva everywhere. For example, Olesya Fedina works at SOGAZ and also at a Moscow municipal institution.
Golovacheva is employed by the company Divnomorye, familiar to you from the film “Putin’s Palace”—they grow grapes and make wine.
Yulia Nazarova works at the National Media Group (NMG).
And her sister Anna is simultaneously employed by both NMG and Alina Kabaeva’s foundation.
Elena Erkhan also works in both organizations:
Then the journalists studied the movements and ticket bookings of these ladies-in-waiting of Alina Kabaeva. And they discovered that all these assistants were constantly traveling to Valdai. They bought tickets to Uglovka and Okulovka—the stations closest to Putin’s residence.
That is a substantial clue—what else would these five women, who have nothing in common except Alina Kabaeva, be doing there? But we have stronger evidence: Alina herself, until the spring of 2017, traveled by ordinary train to Okulovka at least six times, and once more to Uglovka.
Her sister Leysan traveled to those stations 25 times between 2015 and 2021.
Their mother, Lyubov Kabaeva, during the same period traveled to Uglovka as many as 36 times, and to Okulovka three more times.
Surely you agree that such regular travel—and that’s only by rail—suggests that Alina Kabaeva lives here. There is no other explanation for the group trips made by her closest relatives and court ladies: they go there together or separately, help Alina with everyday life, entertain her, spend time with her. And we can add one more piece of evidence that we happened to have lying around. Let’s take to the air again and look at this place on the map—satellite images show that there is a very picturesque lake here, surrounded by forest.
It’s harder to see in winter, but even so it’s clear: total seclusion and privacy—there is not a soul around, not a single building except for a small house on the shore. With its own pier and playground. Since 2016, the owner of this house has been Kabaeva’s cousin Olesya Fedina, one of her ladies-in-waiting, whom they decided to settle nearby. It is only 6 kilometers from here to Putin’s residence.
Now our court ladies and queen no longer need to share an ordinary train with mere mortals. The outlet Dossier recently reported that Putin has acquired his own secret armored train. Here is what it looks like:
From the outside it is almost indistinguishable from ordinary Russian Railways trains: the same gray color with a red stripe. But in one respect the disguise slips: special communications radio antennas are visible on the roofs of several cars. The train has a bedroom for Putin, and all the presidential cars are armored.
And this is where the armored train arrives. It is a so-called special station. A personal rail terminal for Putin built in the middle of the forest, with a helipad and brand-new perfect roads leading from here to the residence. On the end of the building is the sign “EMERCOM of Russia” (the Emergencies Ministry).
Those arriving—or rather, the one arriving—are greeted by three flags.
Reports say that Putin now travels exclusively by armored train. Similar secret special stations have been built in Novo-Ogaryovo:
And near his residence in Sochi.
Makes sense, of course: first he started a war himself, attacked a neighboring country, and now he is afraid to fly on airplanes and installs personal missile systems near his home.
Together with Proekt, we managed to find a person who took part in the construction of Putin’s residence in Valdai. Thanks to him, we can see how this state dacha was designed in the mid-2000s. And appreciate the interior in that instantly recognizable style.
There is a separate funny story here: it is easy to notice that the exterior of the dacha, let’s say, does not really match the Louis XIV style so dear to Putin. Originally, they planned to decorate it in a more modern and neutral style, but then Putin came in and asked for everything to be redone so it would look “like St. Petersburg.” Whatever that was supposed to mean. So they did it—literally like St. Petersburg, just a couple of centuries ago.
This is what the bedroom looks like:
Everything is gilded, velvet everywhere, carpets, speakers from a stereo system. The entrance is framed by pilasters painted with floral motifs and birds—birds in architecture symbolize warmth, light, and foretell harvest and wealth. Apparently, it worked.
This is what the former bedroom of Putin’s wife Lyudmila looks like.
The daughters were housed in similarly luxurious rooms, with painted vaulted ceilings.
Here is a bathroom with a jacuzzi, creative mosaic work, and a giant flowerpot. On the walls, in gold frames, hang paintings that look very much like Aivazovsky.
In another room there is definitely an Aivazovsky, and something tells us it is not a reproduction.
There are a great many paintings in the house overall.
The three-story ruby chandelier is also quite a sight.
We were especially struck by this room. We won’t even risk guessing what it is—but there, among golden walls beneath a golden ceiling, you can sit at a golden table on chairs that look as if they were made from sheets of solid gold. In general, we can always identify the owner by this amount of gold (the principle is simple): if an interior item is gilded, Putin wants it.
Everything is gold! A gold vanity table with a gold armchair, gold mirrors...
Gold lamps, gold fruit bowls.
By the way, notice the coat of arms on the napkins and plates.
Gold clocks and candelabras:
We cannot be sure whether these interiors have survived to the present day, or whether after Lyudmila Putina left, the new mistress redid everything to suit herself. If you have recent photos of Putin’s dacha or any other information about this place, please send it to us by email at blackbox@fbk.info, via our Telegram bot, or through our website.
Proekt’s sources claim that a separate house was in fact built for Alina Kabaeva—800 meters from this one. In footage from 2021 it appears in the frame: construction can be seen near the chapel. The whole area is dug up, there are many vehicles around, but the roof and the pier are already in place. By boat, you can cross a small canal and stroll through a new, vast, whimsical garden.
This area used to be a public arboretum, but now it is a place for Putin’s family to take walks.
If you row a little farther, to the east lies the Valdai residence of billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, Putin’s childhood friend.
Alina Kabaeva is one of the richest women in the world. We have spoken many times about her personal real estate, most of which is registered in the names of her relatives. Alina Kabaeva’s mother, Lyubov Mikhailovna, somehow received an apartment on Ostozhenka from a Gazprom subsidiary worth nearly one billion rubles.
She also has a modest 300-square-meter cottage in Krasnodar Krai, next door to Alexei Miller and the son of Viktor Zolotov.
The gymnast’s 86-year-old grandmother, Anna Zatsepilina, in 2015 received a 200-square-meter apartment in St. Petersburg from Putin’s friend Gennady Timchenko. One like that is worth 200 million rubles. From another Putin associate, Pyotr Kolbin, Alina’s grandmother received two apartments on Arbat Street. At least 600 million. And of course, a dacha: in 2013, Baevsky, a business partner of the Rotenbergs, gave Alina’s grandmother half a hectare of land on Rublyovka (an elite residential area outside Moscow) with two houses totaling 3,100 square meters.
The same Baevsky also bought an apartment for Kabaeva’s sister worth 100 million rubles. This real estate alone can be valued at more than 2.5 billion rubles.
But Proekt’s journalists managed to find something else as well: a truly royal penthouse in Sochi, in the Korolevsky Park residential complex.
2,600 square meters—just imagine. Three floors, terraces, a pool, a spa, a gallery for a private art collection, and its own helipad. Inside this apartment there are even separate apartments for the staff.
A Proekt source claims that Alina Kabaeva personally requested the purchase of this mega-apartment, as well as two more apartments in the same building on other floors. And the desired real estate was acquired for her by Putin’s friends and proxies. Paid for from a special wallet: a Cypriot offshore company where Putin’s “personal” money is kept.
This part of the investigation is also very interesting and deserves attention. And once again, we have something to add.
The offshore company is called Ermira Consultants.
A person directly involved in transactions with this money says the scheme works as follows. If Putin himself or his relatives need to buy something—something insanely expensive that no public official could possibly afford—it is “paid from Ermira,” that is, from this company’s account at Bank Rossiya, the bank of Putin’s friends.
You don’t have to look far for the best example. From 2013 to 2017, that very palace in Gelendzhik belonged to Savoyan Investments Limited from the British Virgin Islands. That jurisdiction is opaque, so we had no way of finding out who owned Savoyan. But Proekt’s journalists established that Savoyan belonged to Ermira.
Ermira also transferred money directly for the construction of the palace. In the form of loans starting as early as 2009—around three billion rubles. Another Ermira subsidiary appears in Proekt’s investigation as well: the offshore company Cluelan Investments. We have come across it too. According to financial reports, it provided money for the purchase of the Lazurnaya Yagoda vineyards next to the palace.
Ermira’s next purchase: by Putin’s standards, an unremarkable 120-square-meter three-room apartment near the Aeroport metro station in Moscow.
Right now it is registered to an Ermira subsidiary. At first it is unclear why a man who has a palace with an aqua-disco and a casino would need such a property. But it was not actually intended for him. In 2010, it was bought and registered to Artur Ocheretny, then the boyfriend and now the new husband of Lyudmila Putina.
Let’s continue. Three houses in the Moscow region, tightly adjoining Putin’s official residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, were bought by the Ermira offshore company in 2006. The first house, directly across the fence from Putin’s residence, is 856 square meters, with an 85-square-meter bathhouse and an outdoor pool on the grounds.
The other two houses, with a combined plot area of 4,500 square meters, look even larger.
We were able to establish who lives there. The address of one of the houses is: Usovo Plus cottage settlement, 16. One of the recent database leaks shows that food was ordered to this house by a man named Ilya.
The same man also ordered food to a 230-square-meter apartment in Ordynsky Lane in the ultra-elite Barkli House complex.
We check the apartment’s owner—and it turns out to be Yevgeny Sergeyevich Nagorny.
That is the name of the new husband of Putin’s daughter, Maria Vorontsova.
And the delivery enthusiast Ilya’s full name is Ilya Bazlov; he works for the Federal Protective Service (FSO).
And in address books he is listed as “Ilya Masha’s Adjutant.” So it is immediately clear who moved in just across the fence from dad.
So from a single offshore company, money goes to a palace for Putin, to a house for Putin’s daughter next to the official residence, and even to an apartment for the boyfriend of Putin’s now tiresome ex-wife. It is all quite unambiguous.
And besides that, Ermira—that is, Putin’s personal offshore company—held a stake in the National Media Group, which includes Channel One, REN TV, STS, and the newspapers Izvestia and Sport-Express.
Another Russian Ermira subsidiary owned the rights to the Putinka vodka brand. Journalists estimated that up to half a billion dollars could have been earned from the production, licensing, and sale of Putinka vodka between 2004 and 2019.
And here is another property, also bought with money from the same offshore company and very familiar to us. A villa on the grounds of the Rus sanatorium in Sochi, half a kilometer from Putin’s Bocharov Ruchey residence. The villa was bought by Platinum, a former Ermira subsidiary, to which Ermira transferred 2.5 billion rubles. It is not known for certain who lives there now, but we have long had the floor plans of this villa in our archives, so let’s examine them anyway.
Here it is: a three-story villa with a huge terrace, with a total area of 2,118 square meters.
On the first floor, in addition to a 130-square-meter lounge, there is an entire in-home wellness spa center: three massage rooms, a gym, a Turkish bath, an infrared sauna, a swimming pool, and treatment rooms.
On the second floor there is a dining room, a private movie theater, and, just in case, another 86-square-meter gym, in case the one on the first floor gets boring.
And on the main, third floor there is the owner’s 64-square-meter bedroom with a 20-square-meter bathroom and a 20-square-meter walk-in closet, as well as two guest bedrooms.
On the roof of the building there is a terrace: it has a sunbathing area, a dining table for eight, two lounge areas for relaxation, a barbecue area, and a freestanding wine cabinet.
The house has five elevators: a passenger elevator, an elevator for groceries, one for trash, one for clean laundry, and a separate one for dirty laundry.
Putin has been in power for 23 years. That is an entire lifetime. An entire generation has been born and raised under Putin. And throughout his rule, all these two decades, he has done one thing—steal. He steals and lies to you so that he can steal even more afterward. The television channels he owns talk around the clock about his greatness. State companies that, in essence, also belong to him, instead of earning money for the Russian budget, spend it on gifts for Putin personally: palaces and yachts, penthouses and real estate for his wives, mistresses, and children.
The courts are bought, prosecutors and investigators are criminals just the same, and in parliament sit talentless United Russia hacks—spineless hangers-on interested in nothing but money. Lies and hypocrisy are the main currency and the main “bond” holding together Putin’s regime, which has now unleashed a war.
Putin hates Russia. He hates all of us—deeply. We get in the way of his ruling and lining his pockets; we get in the way of his gymnast-queen enjoying life in a golden penthouse, giving birth in Switzerland, and sailing on her favorite yacht. And the war Putin dreams of turning into a people’s war has failed to become one. And it never will.
It is very important to talk about Putin’s crimes. To show, as we and other investigative journalists do, that there—there are your pensions, buried in yet another residence with ruby chandeliers and golden cellars. There is the spirituality, conservatism, and “traditional values” we are supposedly meant to fight for—except Putin himself has mistresses, children born out of wedlock, and strip clubs with casinos at home. There is patriotism—oh, how wonderful Russian medicine has supposedly become. Only Putin’s children had better be born in Switzerland, or at the very least under the supervision of European doctors.
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