Page 62 - bne monthly magazine June 2024 Russian Despair Index

62 I Eastern Europe bne June 2024
The sprawling complex on Cape Idokopas.
And the Cape Idokopas complex has recently had a makeover, with a stripper’s pole being replaced by religious icons and a war theme, according to a new report jointly released by Navalny’s
FBK Anti-Corruption Foundation
and independent news outlet Proekt
on May 6, to coincide with President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration, the Kyiv Post reports, to reflect Putin’s growing obsession with war and religion.
“The interior of the palace attests to the scope of Putin’s evolution since the property was built in the early 2010s. The renovated version does not feature a casino, a striptease hall, or an arcade room. Instead, it has a chapel housing an icon of Saint Vladimir, Putin’s patron saint – [the prince believed to have baptised Kyivan Rus in 988],” the report says.
“One of the main halls has been decorated with paintings of battles and corpses. The centrepiece is titled ‘He Who Comes to Us With a Sword Will Die by the Sword!’ The original of this painting is prominently displayed in the Grand Kremlin Palace, and Putin is known to favour the set phrase used in the title,” the report adds.
A very similar story emerged when it was reported that Uzbek state companies built a secret luxury mountain resort
for use by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, including a new reservoir that locals
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say has disrupted their water supply and displaced families, a RFE/RL investigation claimed in 2021.
Most of Russia’s elite live in sumptuous villas that come right out of the Tsarist era palaces built by princely landowners from before the revolution.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s luxury villa was exposed in another Navalny investigation, the “Milovka manor,” and located roughly
a kilometre outside the town of Plyos, about five hours northeast of Moscow. The villa was remarkable, as it included a sophisticated duck house in a pond that led protesters against Russian corruption to bring rubber ducks with them to lampoon Medvedev.
Igor Sechin, the CEO of state-owned oil giant Rosneft, owns a reportedly $60mn luxury house in the exclusive Moscow suburb of Rublyovka, close to Putin’s workweek Moscow residency.
The three-storey marble-clad mansion, occupying 70 hectares of land near
the Moscow suburb of Domodedovo, was identified as the former railways minister Vladimir Yakunin’s property by bloggers using property maps in 2013 and is estimated to be worth millions
of dollars.
And in the most recent scandal, Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov was arrested on corruption charges. Another Navalny investigation had exposed graft on a massive scale fuelling a jet-setting lifestyle for Ivanov and his glamorous wife. Drone footage of their house shows a huge colonnaded villa set in sprawling formal gardens worthy of the 19th century’s nobility.
One of the main halls has been decorated with paintings of battles and corpses. The centrepiece is titled ‘He Who Comes to Us With a Sword Will Die by the Sword!’ The original of this painting is prominently displayed in the Grand Kremlin Palace