A £1bn Black Sea palace, a secret love nest and a hideout 18 miles from the NATO border: How Putin ‘has amassed a lavish portfolio of mansions across Russia’ while claiming to have just £500,000 in bank accounts

As Russian President, Vladimir Putin has endeavoured to project an image of frugality throughout his more than two decades in power.

But while he has free-rein of the grand halls of the Moscow Kremlin and other state-owned luxuries, the Russian public are told little of his vast private wealth.

Over the years, details of Putin’s reported property empire have grown thanks to investigations into his highly secretive family life and personal affairs.

Some Russian and Western sources even say Putin, 71, is the richest billionaire in the world thanks to his alleged stakes in the fortunes of his oligarch cronies.

His wealth has come under the spotlight again in the build up to Russia’s presidential election, which Putin is almost guaranteed to win.

It emerged this week that the President has failed to include most of his lavish properties and luxury yachts on his new official wealth declaration as he stands for six more years as Russia’s despotic president.

And yesterday, MailOnline reported on a new video that has emerged claiming to show Putin’s secret northern hideout – just 18 miles from Russia’s border with NATO.

This is not the first secret property linked to Putin that has come to light.

Including his pension from his years as a KGB spy and salary as Russian president, he claimed in the declaration to have earned £593,537 in the past six years.

He had £477,989 in bank accounts, according to his return.

This is still well-off by Russian standards, where the average annual salary is estimated to be around 1.2 million rubles, a little under £11,000.

Putin also declared a 1,654 sq ft flat in Moscow and another at 829 sq ft in St Petersburg, as well as two Soviet-era vehicles and a 2009 Niva vehicle, a Lada off-roader, and a Skif trailer dating from communist times in 1987.

As president, he has numerous official homes which come with the job.

These include the priceless Kremlin in central Moscow, Novo-Ogaryevo residence outside the city, and Bocharov Ruchey beside the Black Sea in Sochi. 

Another favourite retreat for Putin in Konstantinovsky Palace in his native St Petersburg, where he hosts visiting dignitaries. 

Yet Russian investigative journalists have over the years also uncovered a large portfolio of palaces and yachts said to be owned by the strongman that are hidden from the ordinary Russian people, and are certainly not disclosed publicly.

Complex ownership webs are alleged to lead to Putin.

Often the construction involves his oligarch pals whose Reds-to-Riches fortunes went stratospheric under his repressive rule.

Putin’s ‘£1bn Black Sea palace’

One such palace sits atop cliffs overlooking the Black Sea in Gelendzhik, on 168-acres of land in a spot known as Cape Idokopas.

The vast luxury £1 billion ‘palace’ includes a pole-dancing hookah boudoir, casino, and ‘aqua disco’, according to a 2021 investigation.

It is also said to have a 16-storey underground complex which has been compared with the lair of a James Bond villain.

A mining engineer who worked on the construction said it had indeed been built for the dictator and ‘there is a whole anthill in the rock under the house’ including a nuclear shelter.

The subterranean maze includes a cliff face loggia overlooking the sea and a vast wine cellar. Its construction was more ingenious than Dr No’s bunker, he said.

It was ‘a balcony – literally a loggia hanging over the sea’ built into the cliff, from which the owner can enjoy wine tasting from the palace stocks, he said.

The palace sits around 1.3 miles from the small village of Praskoveevka, which itself sits on the Black Sea coast some 100 miles from both Crimea to the north-west and Sochi to the south-east.

Satellite images over the area show a vast palatial building 600 feet from the sea, surrounded by impressive looking grounds.

There are also outbuildings, each very large in their own right, as well as what appears to be a private landing strip and a dock easily large enough for a yacht.

Roads leading to the palace grounds wind down the hills, and from the satellite images, appear to be lined with other buildings, likely security checkpoints. 

A team working with Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who is currently held in a Russian prison, were the ones to unveil the property’s alleged owner in 2021. 

In a 2-hour video, Navalny claimed to be in possession of leaked floor plans of the property which were used to draw up artists’ impressions of the interior.

Astonishing 3D images of the estate’s interior alleged the palace features an arcade room with slot machines and a dance mat, a spa and a theatre inside the mansion, along with an underground ice rink and even vineyards in the grounds. 

Navalny claimed the estate, which also allegedly includes a church and strip club fitted with a lap dancers’ pole, several times the size of Monaco.

He said the estate and grounds that Russian media had linked to Putin years ago was paid for ‘with the largest bribe in history’.

He also claimed Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) owns some 7,000 hectares of land surrounding the property and that the complex was financed by allies including Igor Sechin, chief of oil giant Rosneft, and billionaire tycoon Gennady Timchenko.

‘It is the most secretive and guarded facility in Russia,’ Navalny said in the video. ‘It isn’t a country house or a residence – it’s an entire city, or rather a kingdom.’

Putin’s secret ‘lakeside love nest retreat’

In another investigation, this time carried out by Proekt last year, revealed that Putin shared another palace north of Moscow at Valdai with secret partner and famous gymnast Alina Kabaeva, 40, living like a Tsar and Tsarina with their young children.

‘Comparing Kabaeva to a medieval ruler is absolutely appropriate,’ states the report.

‘In the course of this investigation, Proekt journalists have established many facts about the relationship between the Russian president and his mistress, all of which seem to have been copied from medieval history books.’

This high-security complex even has his and hers palaces.

The ‘royal residence’ at Valdai began to be constructed ‘almost immediately after Putin came to power’ at the turn of the millennium, the report said.

The despot demanded that it would be styled ‘like St Petersburg’, meaning in the lavish manner of the Russian tsars. 

‘In 2013, Putin officially divorced [former first lady] Lyudmila, but he never stopped loving Valdai. It was here — at first, apparently, in the same ”golden” house — that he brought his new mistress [Kabaeva].’

The report states: ‘He later built a new wooden mansion for Kabaeva and her children. It is located about 800 metres from the ”golden” house. Construction of the house for Kabaeva began in 2020.’

Satellite images shared by the publication purportedly show the properties and the nearby station. Similar private stations for Putin have been built at his residence in Sochi and Novo-Ogaryovo, near Moscow.

It was also reported that a Pantsir-1S air defence system was installed in the nearby village of Yashcherovo after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Kabaeva does not feature on his declaration, and he has never acknowledged a relationship with her despite this being seen as fact by most Russians. 

Putin’s ‘hideout’ 18 miles from NATO border

Missing, too, from the declaration is his lake-and-forest bolthole in the north of Russia where he is alleged to have ‘stolen’ a scenic waterfall near Lake Ladoga, and built a sumptuous retreat around it with vast fenced-off territory.

This is just 18 miles from Finland, a new NATO country that joined following Putin’s 2022 invasion, and reportedly boasts £8,000 bidets.

Allegedly the property’s nearby neighbour just two-and-a-half miles away is former Chelsea tycoon, Roman Abramovich, 57.

A video was released this week laying out the property. 

The narrator of the footage claims that the secret bolthole which Putin is said to share with Kabaeva, 40, is beside the picturesque 13ft Marjalahti waterfall.

It has a modernistic gazebo in full view of the beauty spot, sealed off from ordinary Russian people, according to independent news outlet Dossier Centre.

Google Maps shows at least one of the buildings – with a helipad – at the location but it is not clear whether the video uses a combination of drone footage and CGI images to give such a detailed view. 

The retreat is supposedly in the Lake Ladoga National Park in Karelia – as far north as the Faroe Islands – but close to the Russian NATO border with Finland.

The video goes on to say that there are several buildings and a tell-tale sign that this is part of a huge Putin portfolio of secret homes and palaces hidden from the Russian people.

Putin’s ‘secret Moscow homes’

It is also claimed that the Russian dictator has created a secretive ‘tsar’s village’ of properties for his daughters and ex-wife in a plush Moscow district.

According to a report in August last year, also by Proekt, Putin used secret offshore companies to buy land and lavish properties for his daughters.

The disclosures were purportedly based on emails between Putin’s youngest daughter, Katerina Tikhonova and her ex-husband Kirill Shamalov, who is the son of a friend of Putin. 

The four mansions and Putin’s residence, the Novo-Ogaryovo estate, are situated along the Rublevka highway, a wealthy neighbourhood where a number of oligarchs, government officials, celebrities and tycoons reside. 

Two houses to the east of Novo-Ogaryovo were allegedly bought in 2006 by Cypriot business Ermira. 

Officially, the company is owned by a Russian lawyer, but sources told Proyekt that in reality it belonged to Putin. 

The property in the Usovo-Plyus settlement, worth an estimated 350 million roubles (£3.5 million), was for the use of Maria Vorontsova, 38, Putin’s elder daughter, following her marriage to a Dutch businessman, Proyekt said. 

Tikhonova allegedly had access to a spa, a library and an ‘acrobatics room’, as she has formerly competed in acrobatic dancing competitions.

The communication between Tikhonova and Shamalov saw them converse over refurbishments worth an estimated $9 million, including a $120,000 bar with a marble surround and a $72,000 gold-plated chandelier. 

In 2020, it was also claimed that Putin could be the mystery owner behind a vast palace that sprung up near Moscow.

The palace is located in a luxury development that already was home to the country’s most-expensive house – which is now dwarfed by the construction.

The new building has 91,500sqft of living space, a three-storey outbuilding with another 32,000sqft of space, and stables that span 21,500sqft.

Set in 15 acres of grounds and surrounded by a security wall, the estate also includes a helipad, a football field, a forest and landscaped gardens, complete with a pond.

The owner is simply listed as the ‘Russian Federation’ while the construction was carried out by a company called ‘Property-V’ – leading to speculation that it is owned by somebody high up in the government, and possibly Putin himself. 

Putin’s private navy 

Undeclared, too, is Putin’s private navy of super yachts.

Like all Russian oligarchs he craves super yachts and is linked to the £506 million Scheherazade – a Christmas gift by a group of Russian oligarchs, it is reported.

The astronomical sum for the yacht – seized in Italy amid sanctions over the war in Ukraine – was collected by a group of Russian oligarchs headed by Gennady Timchenko, 71, a close Putin crony.

Another vessel is his £100 million Graceful – nicknamed the Killer Whale – which was towed out of Hamburg to avoid Western sanctions days before the start of the war.

The 267ft floating palace is seen as his love nest, and Kabaeva is known to use both this and the Scheherazade.

Both are crewed by FSO presidential security officers, according to the team of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Putin’s 187ft Olympia yacht was reportedly gifted to him by a billionaire.

Other vessels linked to Putin are the 177ft Chaika, the Orion escort boat, the motor ship Rossiya, and motor boat Burevestnik.

Putin’s declaration admits to a 300 per cent increase in income over the past 12 years. He has been Russian president since the final day of 1999, except for a four year stint from 2008 to 2012 when he was prime minister.