Russian media: a mansion built for Putin’s mistress – the area is now protected

A 1,200-square-meter mansion has been built for Vladimir Putin’s supposed girlfriend Alina Kabageva (39 years old) on a beautiful island. The president has the right of residence nearby. Now this has been declared a “Specially Protected Natural Area”.

This means that this part of the beautiful Valdai Lake, not too far from the historic city of Novgorod, will be completely closed to tourists.

He was proekt. media which revealed the house construction of Kabageva and her children. Now there is another Russian mediator who is independent of the Kremlin, Medusawhich indicate that three days after the detection, the area has been granted a new status as a protected area.

Alina Kabageva became an Olympic champion in rhythmic gymnastics in 2004 and later became a politician in Putin’s United Russia party. She is the head of the largest media group in Russia. Many wonder how it got there. We’ll come back to that shortly.

The Kremlin’s independent media wrote that Kabageva “allegedly” has three children with the president. This has never been confirmed.

However, Proekt.media, which had a number of significant finds, it is clear that a palace has been built for Kabageva on the island, and she and Putin are going to get there by a separate railway.

According to proekt.media, she owns homes worth around $120 million in total, or more than 1.2 billion kroner.

Kabaeva’s house was built on the island a few hundred meters from Putin’s residence. Construction is said to have started in 2020 and completed two years later. The property also has its own dock. The house will stand on the plot of a wealthy man with strong ties to Putin, Yuri Kovalchuk.

Alina Kabageva has a total of five employees, two of whom are her cousins, writes proekt.media. Despite the huge house, there will also be a separate staff quarters on the property.

VG has previously written about Putin’s railway, which will also have stations near the president’s residences in Sochi on the Black Sea and Novo-Ogarjevo outside Moscow.

According to proekt.media, Kabajeva will also have a giant penthouse apartment in Sochi, which was the Olympic city in 2014. The apartment has two floors, and has a swimming pool, sauna, solarium, cinema, bar, ballroom and helipad. It will be designed by the bureau of world fashion designer Valentin Yudashkin.

According to independent media, with an area of ​​​​2,600 square meters it will be “the largest apartment in Russia”, which calls Kabageva “the secret life partner of President Putin.”

It is also described how Putin’s “secret fund” financed not only houses for Kabageva, but also for the president’s ex-wife, son-in-law, and not least: Putin’s much-talked-about mansion in Gelendzhik, which is also located on the Black Sea.

Kabageva was exempted from Western sanctions for a long time, but first the United Kingdom in May and the European Union in June, and then the United States in August 2022 introduced progressive sanctions against her. At the time, opposition leader Alexei Navalny had long requested such a measure.

Proekt.media claims to own more than 20 homes in total. They have pictures and price ratings on all of them – and whoever disposes of them; A sister, mother, grandmother, cousins… Most of them are registered with others, but according to the media they are actually owned by her. According to the media, the real estate was paid for by “Putin’s henchmen” and his friends – people who made a fortune during the more than 20 years of Putin’s rule as Russia’s strongman.

Kabageva also allegedly earns NOK 110 million in her job as head of the media company, which is owned by Putin’s close friend Yuri Kovalchuk. She was also allowed to use the private jets of Putin’s friend and another billionaire, Gennady Timchenko, according to proekt.media.

Note: Mediet Proekt is also known as Agentstvo and was founded in 2018. It focuses on investigative journalism. Founder Roman Badanin has worked for a number of different Russian media outlets and was educated at Stanford University in California.