Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied the claims of the Kremlin’s poisoned critic Alexei Navalny that he owns an opulent billion-dollar palace that was built on fraudulently obtained funds.
The dissident claimed last week in a video that was seen by about 86 million people that Putin’s allies, including oil chiefs and billionaires, paid for the construction of the $ 1.35 billion palace on the Black Sea.
It is said to have a casino, a skating rink and a vineyard.
“Nothing that is listed there as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never has,” Putin told students in a videoconference on Monday, the BBC reported.
The strongman called the video “compilation and editing” and said he found it “boring”.
Putin, who was questioned by student Danil Chemezov, 20, at an event that marked the day of the students, admitted that he did not watch the entire video for “lack of time”, but that “leafed through the video selections that my assistants brought me, ”According to East2West News.
His denial came at the time when two Kremlin guards were fired after watching a huge protest against him, the agency said.
Mikhail and Maksim Terekhov, 21-year-old twins, served in a unit of the Federal Security Service, which is under Putin’s command, according to online media BAZA.
The brothers went to Pushkin Square in Moscow on Saturday and then fought, with Mikhail leaving after saying it was “dangerous” to stay there.
Her brother, who stayed behind, was arrested and is expected to appear in court, according to the media.
Both men were told they were fired, the report said.
Meanwhile, Putin said that no minors should participate in the pro-Navalny protests, adding that the police must also act within the law, Reuters reported.
No one should try to promote “his ambitious goals and targets, especially in politics”, through protests, he said in an apparent reference to Navalny.
The dissident was taken into custody on January 17, after flying home for the first time since he was poisoned last summer.
His arrest was ordered by the Moscow prison service in connection with alleged violations of a suspended sentence in an embezzlement case that he insists was forged.
Navalny fell into a coma during a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on August 20. Two days later, he was transferred from one hospital in Siberia to another in Berlin.