MOSCOW – A team led by Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny published a comprehensive investigation on Tuesday describing a secret palace built for President Vladimir V. Putin on the Black Sea, with the report being released less than 24 hours after Navalny have been sentenced to prison.
The report was the latest blow to Navalny’s dramatic battle with Putin, which is taking place before an online audience of millions, and came when supporters of the opposition leader seek to energize the street protests planned for this weekend.
The investigation – complete with floor plans, financial details and photographs of the interior of a complex that Navalny says costs more than $ 1 billion – seemed to offer the most comprehensive account of a huge residence the president would have built for himself in southern Russia. . verdant coastline.
The Kremlin denied the report’s findings, which went online on Tuesday as a 113-minute video on YouTube and a long illustrated text version that also invited users to post photos of Putin’s alleged luxury on Facebook and Instagram. The video has been viewed more than four million times on YouTube.
“They will continue to steal more and more, until they bankrupt the entire country,” says Navalny in the video, referring to Putin and his circle. “Russia sells large quantities of oil, gas, metals, fertilizers and wood – but people’s income keeps falling and falling, because Putin has his palace.”
Navalny – who flew home on Sunday after being treated in Germany for near-fatal poisoning in Siberia in August – was arrested in passport control in sight of Russians watching live broadcasts of his arrival. On Monday, Navalny was sentenced to prison for 30 days during a trial in an impromptu court at a Moscow police station, with a portrait of a Stalin-era secret police chief on the wall behind him.
Before being taken, Navalny asked the Russians to “take to the streets” against Putin in videos that his team posted online. And on Tuesday, his team released the palace investigation, which Navalny recorded while he was in Germany. The text in the video’s opening frames urges viewers to participate in demonstrations at 2 pm on Saturday in the “central streets of their cities”.
“Navalny has been fighting for our rights for many years,” says the text. “Now it’s our turn to fight for him.”
Reports of a palace being built for Putin near the tourist town of Gelendzhik, on the Black Sea, first appeared more than a decade ago. The satellite images show an imposing rectangular building, a large alley, a helipad and other structures connected by a winding road in a remote section of the mountainous coast.
The project was kept secret for a long time, and Putin’s spokesman on Tuesday repeated his denials that Putin had a palace there. His official residence on the Black Sea is a more humble complex in the city of Sochi, 150 miles away.
“We explained years ago that Putin has no palace in Gelendzhik,” said spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov, according to Russian media.
Navalny presented financial records and other evidence he said points to the palace being built for Putin by associates and called it “the biggest bribe in history”.
Some details had already appeared in Russian reports, but Navalny introduced them in his trademark, populist style. His previous research reports on the wealth of the Russian elite had propelled him to prominence as an anti-corruption activist and leader of the opposition.
His team found that almost 30 square miles of land around the palace were controlled by the Russian domestic intelligence agency, that the airspace above was restricted and that the coast guard did not allow boats within a mile.
There were also new eye-popping descriptions of what the report said was Putin’s luxurious lifestyle.
A contractor, Navalny said, leaked detailed plans and his team used them to create interactive three-dimensional models of the interior. The ground floor includes a spa, a cinema room, a wine cellar and an outdoor area with fountains described as “aquatic disco”. The upstairs, according to the report, has a larger theater, a casino lounge and a windowless hookah room with a pole dance stage.
The report also describes an underground hockey rink, a church, a seaside tunnel and a 260-foot-long bridge that leads to a teahouse.
“We are publishing plans for your palace,” Maria Pevchikh, who heads Navalny’s research unit, I wrote on Twitter, referring to Mr. Putin. “Unfortunately, grandpa crazy about his own safety will no longer be able to use it.”
In comments made to journalists before the report was released, Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, ignored Western calls for Navalny to be released.
“We heard these calls, but in this case we cannot and will not take these statements into account,” said Peskov. “This is an absolutely domestic issue and we will not allow anyone to interfere with it.”
Navalny himself spent Monday in a high security section of a famous Moscow prison, Matrosskaya Tishina. In a message to his supporters that he passed on to his lawyers and that was posted on Instagram, Navalny said he did not regret returning to Russia, despite having been arrested.
About the special prison he was held in, Mr. Navalny wrote: “I read about it in the books and now I’m here. This is Russian life for you. “