Luxury complex includes refuge and more than 100m of hidden tunnels
May 19 2023, The Times
President Putin has a large underground complex beneath his seaside palace that could serve as a refuge in case of public unrest, according to plans shared online.
The subterranean complex is thought to have multiple ventilation shafts and be encased in 38cm-thick concrete walls.
The existence of the $1 billion palace under which the tunnels lie was revealed in 2021 by the investigative team of Alexei Navalny, 46, the jailed Russian opposition leader. It is near the resort town of Gelendzhik on Russia’s Black Sea Riviera.
Navalny’s team later released leaked photographs which showed the building had gilded stucco work, a swimming pool flanked by neo-classical marble columns and a saloon for smoking hookah pipes with a pole on a platform for pole dancing. There was also a church, an arboretum and an ice hockey rink for the games that Putin likes to play with oligarch friends and the dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.
Now, opponents of Putin, 70, have circulated plans drawn up for a complex under the palace, which consists of two large tunnels connected by an elevator that descends about 50 metres below the surface.
In the plans, revealed in English by Business Insider, the two tunnels are approximately 40 and 60 metres long, respectively, and 6 metres wide, creating about 600 square metres of potential living space that shows signs of being blast-proof.
The lower tunnel includes a moving walkway leading to an exit by a beach.
Thaddeus Gabryszewski, an engineer familiar with defensive structures who reviewed the diagrams, said the complex appeared to have an emergency function. “This tunnel set-up has all kinds of safety and security,” he told Business Insider. “There’s a fire system. There’s water, there’s sewerage. This is intended for someone to survive or escape.”
Plans for the tunnels were put online in the early 2010s by the contractor that produced them, and later removed, although they can still be viewed via the web archive Wayback Machine.
They have circulated in online forums for “diggers” or urban explorers. One digger affiliated with a group called SectZe alerted Business Insider to the plans. A spokesperson for the group said in an email exchange that they were sharing their findings “because we are tired of Putin’s stupid face and want to show his paranoid underground transport”.
Despite widespread support among Russians for the war in Ukraine, there are undercurrents of dissent.
The independent website Vazhnye Istorii revealed on Thursday that a survey conducted by Putin’s administration to test the mood among students found that 44 per cent of those polled thought the country was in crisis.
The Kremlin denies any link between Putin and the palace. Navalny’s team allege it was built for the leader by tycoons and officials who secretly act as his “wallets” using complicated financial schemes.
They also say the palace is partly encircled by a 7,000-hectare “buffer zone” owned by the Federal Security Service, or FSB.
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