Satellite images prove that Vladimir Putin had his luxury summer residence Bočarov Ručej by the Black Sea demolished. Journalists from the Russian opposition media outlet Proekt claim that the demolition apparently occurred because of the Russian president’s fear of increasingly frequent Ukrainian drone strikes on targets in Russia.
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Putin grilled, exercised and received world statesmen at the Bočarov Ručej summer residence. | Video: Reuters
Putin according to the server Kyiv Post spent a lot of time in his holiday residence near Sochi in recent years. The modernized Soviet-era building was a combination of a luxury summer residence and a high-end workspace. It had impressive meeting rooms and offices.
Even so, Putin apparently had the building razed to the ground. Web Proekt published satellite images showing the presidential residence in May 2023 and a year later. While the house with the red roof can still be clearly seen in the first photo, only the ground can be made out in the new shots.
Photo: Proekt
Previously, Putin routinely spent around forty days a year at the villa, hosting important foreign visits or celebrating holidays and birthdays with his lover, former Russian Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva. However, he was scheduled to come to his headquarters only once this year, and that was for a meeting with the head of the Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi.
“Putin last flew to Sochi seven months ago. He even broke a long-standing tradition this year and skipped the celebration of Alina’s birthday,” a source who described himself as close to the president’s entourage claimed to Proektu.
Among the visitors that Putin hosted here were, for example, former US President George Bush, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, former British Prime Minister David Cameron, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Putin left an even more lavish palace
According to unverified claims, Putin had an exact replica of his Kremlin office built in this residence and his other holiday homes to give the impression that he was still in Moscow during the Covid-19 pandemic. Allegedly, he was to continue this forgery in the following years.
There are opinions that the villa was razed to the ground in preparation for redevelopment and that Putin is using the war as an excuse to replace the current palace. It was built at the behest of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, whom Putin blames for the loss of Crimea to Ukraine.
The media claim that bunkers would undoubtedly be a part of the new construction, as Putin’s fear of a possible assassination increased significantly after the start of Russian aggression against Ukraine. According to the Kyiv Post, this is also confirmed by other Kremlin sources. According to them, the Russian president prefers to travel by armored train, he uses the plane when it is unavoidable.
Proekt also notes that the demolition of the Bočarov Ručej residence was kept secret because, like many other villas used by Putin, it is located in a historically or ecologically protected area.
According to the Kyiv Post, the Russian president was also supposed to leave his private refuge on a cliff in Gelendzhik in the Krasnodar region, 170 km northwest of Bocharov. It cost $1.2 billion and was an even more lavish palace, which is said to house a cinema, casino, nightclub and hookah bar. It is to have a sixteen-story underground network of tunnels and bunkers, some of which lead to a private beach that can also serve as a secret emergency exit.
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