Russian President Vladimir Putin has a secret network of underground tunnels that run beneath his Black Sea palace retreat, leaked plans show.
Mr Putin ordered the construction of a huge underground bunker under Gelendzhik Palace, according to plans published online by the engineering firm in charge of the project, with a network of tunnels about 50 meters below the surface.
The complex, first reported by Business Insider, it is believed to have been built for defense in the event of a revolution or war and was built before Russia seized Crimea in 2014.
The £1billion mansion sits on the waterfront overlooking the sea and covers 190,000 square feet. It even has its own church, ice rink, casino and hookah lounge.
The maze of hidden tunnels was revealed by jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation after the defunct Russian construction firm Metro Style publishes the charts on its site in early 2010 to showcase their work.
The bunkers appear to have a ventilation system, sewerage and fresh water supply, while the walls are 15-inch concrete casings as shown in the diagrams.
There is also an elevator shaft that connects the complex to the two tunnels, as seen in one diagram – and the lower one has a walkway to the beach, as well as cable racks that can be used to run electricity, lighting and fiber optic cables to the command post .
Meanwhile, the exits from the two tunnels can be seen on the cliff face rising from the sea towards the palace.
“This tunnel setup has all kinds of safety and security,” said Tadeusz Gabriszewski, who is a civil engineer familiar with the defense structures and reviewed the diagrams for Business Insider. “There is a fire protection system. There is water, there is sewage. This is meant for someone to survive or escape.
The engineering company describes the project as an “underground resort complex” in Gelendzhik, the city closest to the Russian president’s palace, and spans 6,500 square feet.
Speaking of Business Insider, Michael K. Kimmage, a former State Department official who has worked on Russia and Ukraine policy, said: “Putin has a lot of anxiety about being the less than legitimate leader of Russia.
“So knowing that his legitimacy is not fully assured by elections, he will seek to increase his personal safety through a complex of well-protected private residences.”
The charts were taken down from the Metro Style website in 2016, but were still visible on the Wayback Machine, which is an archive of online content.
They were then distributed in a community by so-called “diggers”, which are a group of Russian citizens who visit and document banned sites.
Narrated by an anonymous digger who said he was part of a group called “Sect Z.” Business Insider he shared the images “because we are tired of Putin’s stupid face and want to show his paranoid underground transport”.
Last month, an officer protecting Mr Putin defected and called the Russian president a “paranoid war criminal”.
Gleb Karakulov, 35, who served as an engineer in the presidential communications department of the Federal Security Service (FSO), said last month that Mr Putin preferred to stay “in his bunker” rather than travel because he so paranoid about attempted murder.
The Russian president is also said to travel with a 2.5-meter-tall box to prevent leaks of secret conversations and Western eavesdropping.
Mr Karakulov claims the Russian president is self-isolating for the fourth consecutive year for fear of contracting Covid-19, and staff can only work in the same room as him after being in isolation for two weeks.
Mr Putin does not use a mobile phone or the internet, meaning his knowledge of events is filtered through the secret services – and what he watches on state-controlled Russian television, according to Mr Karakulov.
Speaking about the war in Ukraine, Mr Karakulov called on officers to produce evidence of Mr Putin as a “war criminal”, saying the war was “beyond the pale” and “defies reason”.
When opposition leader Mr Navalny’s organization published an initial exhibition of the Russian president’s Black Sea palace in 2021, thousands of Russians protested, holding up gold-painted toilet brushes in connection with the £700 crockery, which was allegedly found at the residence.
Putin has denied owning the palace. Meanwhile, his billionaire childhood friend claims the property belongs to him, not the president, who he says had nothing to do with it.
But the palace, which is surrounded by 17,000 acres of forest, is constantly guarded by Mr Putin’s security team and is protected by a no-fly zone – and the Kremlin has failed to explain why this is as the president does not live there .
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