Russian President Vladimir Putin owns a secret palace by the Black Sea, which has an underground network of tunnels to help him escape, according to leaked documents accessed by Business Insider. The 190,000 square feet, $1.3 billion complex is perched on a rugged cliff overlooking the Black Sea and has every possible luxury that its owner requires. The existence of the palace was first revealed in 2021 by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who said it has a church, a wine cellar, a casino and an ice rink, the outlet further said.
The palace is sealed off from rest of the Russia by 17,000 acres of forest and a special no-fly zone.
The building's blueprints, showing elaborate tunnels running beneath it, were released by Metro Style, a now-defunct Russian contractor. The company posted these maps on its website in 2010 and they remained available till 2016.
Using the Wayback Machine, an archive of online content, the diagrams can still be accessed.
The two tunnels as revealed in the Black Sea palace blueprints.
They were dug out by a community called 'diggers' - Russian citizens who visit and document forbidden sites. One of the diggers, who belonged to a group called "Sect Z" told Business Insider that he was sharing the images "because we are tired of Putin's stupid face and want to show his paranoid underground transport".
Thousands of Russians had come out on the streets in 2021 when Mr Navalny published the expose on Mr Putin's Black Sea complex. The Russian President has denied owning the palace.
Shortly after Mr Navalny's investigation, Arkady Rotenberg, a billionaire and childhood friend of Mr Putin, came out to claim the property belonged to him and the President had nothing to do with it.
But questions were raised why the complex is under 24-hour security and has a no-fly zone around it.
According to the diagrams posted on Metro Style's website, the bunkers have their own ventilation system as well as fresh water supply.
Photo Credit: The tunnels were built by Mr Putin to survive or escape.
They schematics also show that an elevator shaft connects the complex to the two tunnels, with the lower one leading to the beach.
The Telegraph claimed that Mr Putin ordered the construction of the tunnels, which lie about 50 metres below the sea level, for his survival in the event of a revolution or war.
