A Palace Fit for a Russian Czar

"You can live there. There is sewage, amenities, very sturdy walls."

"It's a fully fledged bunker you can hide in."

Georgy Alburov, Navalny ally

"These tunnels are not bunkers. For it to be properly secure you have to be able to close it off."

"I have a suspicion that's what we're talking about here [series of tunnels designed to evacuate in case of an attack]."

"The whole Gelendzhik palace is a monument to excessive luxury -- with everything else you've got, why shouldn't you have a travelator [moving walkway in one of the tunnels] to take you to the beach?"

Mark Galeotti, author Putin's Wars: From Crimea to Ukraine

 

"Putin has a lot of anxiety about being the not-entirely-legitimate leader of Russia. So knowing that his legitimacy is not entirely secured by elections, he is going to seek to maximize his personal safety through a complex of well-defended personal residences."

"We have to see this as part of a long confrontation with the West that has marked the last 13 or 14 years of Putin's life,"

"The two times there has been a big transition in Russian history — 1917 and 1991 — the status of the capital city and the leader's position there has been a big issue. Putin is solving for that contingency by establishing a network of residences that are as far from the center as possible. So a tunnel system within the Black Sea complex makes a lot of sense. Even without an active threat, he's going to be worrying about this eventuality."

"With the war in Ukraine, there's speechmaking, there's propaganda, there's exaggeration — there's this performative aspect that plays to Russia's domestic politics. But this is also deadly real. Putin perceives himself as being engaged in a confrontation with the West. The nuclear dimension is an important part of that. He knows he is standing on top of a volcano. He doesn't seem to be so psychopathic as to initiate a nuclear conflict — he has grandchildren — but he's been standing on that edge for a very long time. These tunnels, this bunker, is a part of that." 

Michael C. Kimmage, former State Department official on Russia and Ukraine policy

 

"This tunnel set-up has all kinds of safety and security. There's a fire system. There's water, there's sewer. This is intended for someone to survive or escape."

"These images are not blueprints. They are closer to architectural drawings. They show you the intent, the flow, and the premise of these spaces."

"Those trays could be for communications, lighting, power — anything that goes through a cable or tube. It's an awful lot of cable just for the tunnel itself."

"So it could be some kind of back-up system for the palace complex."

Thaddeus Gabryszewski, structural engineer familiar with defensive structures  

Diagrams showing a tunnel complex beneath Putin's Black Sea palace are evidence of just how long the Russian leader has been fixated on the possibility of existential conflict with the West.

Contributor/Getty Images; FBK; Metro 2000 via Wayback Machine; Alyssa Powell/Insider

Metro Style posted plans online, the engineering firm behind the project to build tunnel constructions beneath Russian President Vladimir Putin's Black Sea palace, about 50 metres below the surface. An underground complex built prior to Moscow's seizure of Crimea in 2014, before Vladimir Putin became persona non grata throughout Europe with his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The palace, reputed to have cost $1.7 billion to build has its own church, ice rink, casino and hookah lounge, the entire edifice stretching across 190,000 square feet overlooking the Black Sea.

 

Church on the palace complex

Business Insider first reported the existence of the tunnels and knowledge of the tunnels became known only when the defunct construction firm that built them posted online diagrams meant to register as proof of the quality of their construction. The images were published on the Metro Style website in early 2010, describing the project as an "underground complex for a resort" close to Gelendzhik, the closest town to the palace -- but without identifying the palace itself or its owner, the president of Russia.

Diagrams give details of bunkers with ventilation systems, sewage and fresh water supplies, with walls reinforced 15-inch concrete shells. The complex in its entirety spans 6,500 square feet, with an elevator shaft connecting the two tunnels to the complex; the lower one featuring a walkway leading to the beach below. Cable racks that could be used to carry electricity, lighting and fibre-optic cables into a command post are in the lower tunnel, with exits from both tunnels visible on the cliff face rising up from the sea to the palace.

An aerial view of the palace complex and the three tunnel entrances.

Google Earth; annotations by Insider

The diagrams, once removed from Metro Style's website, remained visible on the Wayback Machine, an archive of online content circulated in a community of 'diggers' representing Russian citizens who visit and document forbidden sites. One anonymous such digger claiming he belonged to a "Sect Z" group shared the images "because we are tired of Putin's stupid face and want to show his paranoid underground transport", he told Business Insider, who released them for public scrutiny. He hoped, he said, that the images would serve to hasten the "end of the regime".

The organization headed by jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny -- Putin's leading Russian political opponent -- published an expose of Vladimir Putin's Black Sea palace in 2021. Revelations that led to thousands of Russians protesting on the streets, with some holding up gold-painted toilet brushes, referring to a $1,200 utensil reportedly found in the residence. The palace, surrounded by 17,000 acres of woods is permanently protected by the Russian president's security team, is not owned by Vladimir Putin, according to his pledges of innocence of knowledge of the palace.

A depiction of one of the bathrooms based on the floor plans.

A childhood friend of Mr. Putin's, billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, claimed the property belonged to him and the president had no connection with the palace, not long after Navalny's investigation laid bare to the Russian public the megalomaniac czarist ambitions exemplified by a series of huge estates and palaces, the property of the Russian president. In denials put forward by the Kremlin of the palaces having any association with the president of Russia, the Kremlin failed to address why it was that the palace remains under 24-hour guard by state security forces, protected by a no-fly zone.

 

Navalny's video already drew attention to areas of the building where building work was taking place   YouTube/Alexei Navalny