Vladimir Putin, who unleashed a bloody war in Ukraine and has killed two hundred thousand people there, continues to tremble for his own life.
On television, he is a fearsome, brazen geopolitical player shattering Western hegemony. But in real life? In real life, Putin is paranoid with fear. He is afraid of literally everything.
He is afraid of dishes and food—everywhere he goes, he carries his own thermos and drinks only from it.
He is afraid of his colleagues—they are seated 6 meters away and made to undergo tests before meeting with Putin.
He is afraid of ordinary people—he moves around with a crowd of bodyguards, wearing body armor.
And his motorcade, as long as Saturn’s rings, is unmistakable.
In any city Putin visits, people are forbidden from looking out their windows, and the roles of local residents are played by disguised security officers. He is even afraid, pardon the expression, to use a toilet away from home: journalists discovered that Putin has a special attendant who follows him around with a suitcase into which the president’s bodily waste is collected.
Putin is afraid of literally everything!
Propagandists talk about a triumphant war against NATO, claiming that any day now Putin’s army will conquer Ukraine, missiles will fly toward Washington, and the world will submit to Putin. But in reality… there are cemeteries filled with thousands of dead convicts, the bodies of Russian soldiers that no one even bothers to retrieve, the occupation of a small Ukrainian village is presented as a great military victory, and meanwhile inside Russia itself something explodes every day—now in the Kursk region, now in the Belgorod region, now a drone is found not far from Moscow.
Putin loves comparing himself to great predecessors, assigning himself a historic role, as if he too were a brave commander ready to lay down his life in battle for the fatherland.
But in reality, Vladimir Putin is not going to lay down anything at all. He will ride around in an armored train, build bunkers for himself, and create exclusion zones around his homes so that, God forbid, nothing should happen to his precious self. And he will send other people—ordinary people—to certain death. He does not care about them.
The war has, of course, affected Putin’s paranoia. It is hard to say how much thicker his body armor has become or how many extra inspections the tea in his thermos now goes through, but some things cannot be hidden. Look at this photograph, taken in January of this year near Putin’s Valdai residence. It shows a Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft missile and gun system. It can shoot down just about anything in the air—a missile, a helicopter, a drone.
Another air-defense system was spotted near Putin’s other official residence—Novo-Ogaryovo. Here are the images: the same Pantsir as at Valdai.
Air-defense systems were also installed on the roofs of several buildings in Moscow: on the roof of the Moscow police headquarters, on the Defense Ministry building, and on the roof of a business center in Teterinsky Lane. They are positioned to cover approaches to the Kremlin from all sides.
In other words, Putin genuinely fears that while he is at work, a missile could come flying at him. And while these particular systems protecting the Kremlin and two official residences can at least be formally justified—strategic sites, after all, anything is possible—this brand-new Pantsir-S1, the one we were sent a photograph of, is harder to explain.
Let’s examine the images closely. Mountains are visible in the background.
That narrows the field considerably, so naturally the first place we look is Sochi. Near the official residence there (Bocharov Ruchey), there are obviously no such mountains.
So we look at Krasnaya Polyana. In the photo, behind the Pantsir, you can clearly see the mountain contours and a cleared strip on the slope. After browsing Yandex’s panoramic maps, we find the exact same view without much difficulty.
The trees are the same, as is the guardrail, which means the air-defense system is standing on this patch of ground along the road.
Why here, exactly? Very simple: Putin likes to relax in complete safety too. And this is where he does it.
A kilometer from the anti-missile installation is a complex of buildings that, formally, is not supposed to have anything to do with the president at all.
All of this—20 hectares of land, two enormous houses, a building for accompanying staff, a helipad, and even its own ski lift with VIP cabins—according to the documents, belongs to Gazprom.
But in reality, this is Putin’s secret winter residence, the place where he goes skiing. This chalet was built for the Olympics.
It was built at the same time as another very similar chalet next door—recognize it? It is Medvedev’s winter dacha from the investigation He Is Not Dimon to You.
They were even given matching names—Dimon’s is the “Pshekhako” official guest residence, and Putin’s is the “Achipse” official guest residence.
And since these places are so dear to Vladimir Vladimirovich’s heart that he has actually deployed air defenses around them, we simply have to find out what is inside. Fortunately, we have floor plans of the main building.
The house has only four floors—two underground and two above ground. Its total area is 3,800 square meters. On the very lowest level there are mainly staff and technical rooms—storage areas, utility rooms, vestibules, workrooms, and so on.
Our hearts tighten with nostalgia when we look at room 10.1: the egg-processing room. There is an identical one in Putin’s Gelendzhik palace.
On the same floor there are refrigerated rooms for fish and meat, a flour room, a vegetable room, a meat-and-fish room, cold and hot kitchens, a laboratory for some reason, a milk storage room, and a separate pantry for pickles and preserves.
One floor above, but still underground, there is a hall with a panoramic elevator and a huge spa complex.
There is a swimming pool, a water zone, a salt room, a steam bath with salts, and Finnish and herbal saunas. There are also rooms with the mysterious name “karakala”—a kind of whirlpool bath—and a Kneipp bath, with alternating hot and cold water. And of course there are Putin’s favorite amusements: contrast pools and a cryochamber, which are found in all his residences.
Let’s go up to the next floor.
At the entrance there is a security post, and off to the side a personal assistant’s room. We see a dining hall, as well as two large bedrooms with separate dressing rooms and sitting rooms. One of the bedrooms is marked on a separate plan as female; it has a three-panel vanity mirror. The other bedroom, apparently the male one, has a full study.
Our plans also mark a separate room called the “FSO kitchen,” meaning a kitchen for the Federal Protective Service. One of the rooms in the house was intended to be converted for that purpose.
We have just been looking at this house, but after the Olympics the residence was expanded—a new house was built 120 meters away, more than twice as large, at 8,300 square meters. A glimpse inside comes from procurement records for this house uncovered by journalists.
They found a “Nicholas II” grand piano there, named after the first customer to order such a piano. Price: six million rubles.
There is also a goose-down blanket for 140,000 rubles, and lamps with Swarovski crystals for 500,000 rubles:
And a mantel clock for half a million rubles.
In short, there is plenty there worth guarding with an anti-aircraft missile and gun system.
By the way, if you have any information about this Putin property—or about his corruption in general—please send it to us. Here is how you can do that: we have an anonymous website, a Telegram bot, and an email address: blackbox@fbk.info.
For more than a year, Putin and his army have been waging war against Ukraine. Under the fairy tales that fascism and Satanism are flourishing in Ukraine and that people there supposedly do not even want to speak Russian, Putin is killing hundreds of thousands of people, bombing peaceful cities, and literally destroying an entire country and nation.
And in this mad frenzy, Putin cares about nothing: not the lives of innocent people in Ukraine, not the Russians he has impoverished and is sending to slaughter, not even Russia itself, which he has turned into a completely isolated pariah state. He has a historic mission, you see. And while rivers of blood are flowing and people’s lives are being destroyed, he will sit in a bunker. Or on an armored train. Or go skiing, surrounded by anti-aircraft missile systems. War is war, but no one has canceled vacation.
Putin loves comparing himself to Peter the Great, Alexander III, or Prince Vladimir, implying that he is their historical heir.
But let’s face the truth. Vladimir Putin is a dark chapter in the history of our country. A thieving, cowardly dictator whom we are obliged to stop.
No to war. Freedom for Alexei Navalny.