Strava exercise app leak proves Putin owns hidden £1billion palace

New proof has emerged that Vladimir Putin secretly owns a £1billion clifftop Black Sea palace after after a data leak from an exercise app. The Kremlin has denied the lavish residence belongs to the Russian president, but an investigation by French newspaper Le Monde revealed the dictator’s bodyguards are often in the vicinity.

This is based on data from the Strava exercise app which showed four of Putin’s Federal Protective Service [FSO] security team were running near the lair in August to September of 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2024. The same American app also links the bodyguards to another secret Putin residence, a dacha bolthole just 18 miles from NATO territory in Finland in the Lake Ladoga National Park, says the newspaper.

Russian independent media outlets and now-dead opposition leader Alexei Navalny triggered a scandal by revealing the existence of the Gelendzhik pile which has its own vineyard and 16 storeys of underground passageways buried in the rock, described as more ingenious than Dr No’s bunker. To diffuse the scandal, 72-year-old Putin’s close billionaire friend Arkady Rotenberg claimed he – not the dictator – was the ‘beneficiary’ of the palace, and intended to turn it into an aparthotel.

Few believed this and the latest revelations are a further indication that this palace belongs to Putin and his secret partner Alina Kabaeva, 41, who has two undisclosed sons with the tyrant, Ivan, nine, and Vladimir Junior, five. The palace designs included on the eighth subterranean floor ‘a balcony – literally a loggia hanging over the sea’ built into the cliff, from which the owner can enjoy wine tasting from the palace stocks, said a mining engineer-turned-whistleblower, who reportedly worked on the construction – named only as Viktor.

Compared to the lair of a James Bond villain, it includes a throne for the dictator, and earlier featured an adult stage and pole-dancing hookah hall. An investigation in May by outlets FBK – formerly associated with ‘murdered’ Navalny – and Proekt found that the decor inside the palace was being revamped. Out went the dictator’s notorious adult stage and pole-dancing hookah hall, casino, gaming room and ‘aqua disco’, for which he was mocked and shamed in the original 2021 disclosure.

Possibly they are not seen in keeping with his recent drive for traditional values. Out, too, went the garish gold noticed in the previous exposés of the Putin palace. This was replaced by a church-inside-the-palace complete – like Russian emperors used to have – with its own wooden throne for Putin, along with sacred religious icons and images. One depicts canonised Prince Vladimir the Great – the same name as Putin, and his historical hero – who more than one thousand years ago was credited with uniting Ukraine and Russia. ‘This is probably the only room where the name of the real owner of this palace is directly indicated,’ said the investigation.

Epic paintings of historical war scenes appeared – showing a heroic Russia, for example at the 1812 Battle of Borodino when Napoleon suffered grievous losses. One includes part of a prominent Kremlin painting called ‘Whoever comes to us with a sword will die by the sword!’ The investigation was based on disclosures from a worker on the palace redesign who slipped his FSB minders to film the gargantuan palace dripping in luxury. The largest bedroom overlooking the sea has a figurine of a bear. There are treatment rooms possibly to be used for ‘medical and cosmetic procedures’. Earlier the mining engineer described ‘a whole anthill in the rock under the house’ including a nuclear shelter.

In August 2023, General Gennady Lopyrev, 69, once close to Putin, who was keeper of the secrets about the palace’s construction died mysteriously in jail. The northern hideaway is in Karelia region is close to a scenic 13ft waterfall and a slice of commandeered national park. A gazebo in full view of the beauty spot is sealed off from ordinary Russian people, according to independent news outlet Dossier Centre.

Putin is known to have another palace north of Moscow at Valdai where Kabaeva (Pictured right) and their two sons live like royalty. The Strava exercise app was used by French guards protecting President Emmanuel Macron, US secret service agents who protect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, reported Le Monde.

The military personnel – generally sports enthusiasts – had not thought to protect and conceal their activity and decided to post it publicly. This in turn has allowed Strava to reveal the presence of military bases across the globe, or more frequently, their layout and the paths taken by guards in or around them.

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