Last month, dozens of photographs of what has become known as “Putin’s Black Sea Palace” were dumped onto Ruleaks, the Russian analog of Wikileaks. The pictures gave new life to allegations that Russian taxpayers have been unknowingly funding a grandiose vacation home for their prime minister’s “personal use.” Presidential Affairs chief Vladimir Kozhin denied the administration had any involvement in the project, which whistleblowing businessman Sergei Kolesnikov claims has eaten up $1 billion in construction costs so far.

The photographs piqued the curiosity of environmental activists at the Environment Watch North Caucasus group, who say the sprawling complex is being built illegally on protected land. Despite being briefly arrested, the activists were able to release their own pictures of the palace, which is apparently crawling with federal guards. Then, last week, Novaya Gazeta published documents that, as they put it, “not only confirm the Office of Presidential Affairs was involved in the construction of the facility in Gelendzhika, but also point directly to Vladimir Kozhin as the civil servant who approved the project.”

In a column written for the Moscow Times, business magazine editor Alexei Pankin explains what all of this talk about luxury dachas could mean for Russia’s current political situation.

The Great Dacha Wars
By Alexei Pankin
Feberuary 22, 2011
The Moscow Times

Russia is headed for some major shocks. I came to that conclusion after reading a news release with the heading: “Yabloko Party Activists Detained at Putin’s Black Sea Dacha.” The key word here is “dacha.”

Late last year, businessman Sergei Kolesnikov wrote an open letter informing President Dmitry Medvedev that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was having a $1 billion palatial residence built for himself on the Black Sea shore, and the money to finance the project was obtained by extorting money from businesses. Kommersant, Dengi, Vedomosti and Novaya Gazeta newspapers and Radio Svoboda all ran stories on the subject, and Sobesednik newspaper reporter Rimma Akhmirova was recently arrested at the construction site. Investigations by journalists have generally corroborated Kolesnikov’s claims.

Instead of being elated by the triumph of the free media over corruption, I am deeply concerned. The problem is that every time there is a public fight against “dacha corruption,” it ends with a new round of hardships for ordinary citizens.

For example, in 1990-91, rather modest dachas owned by nine ministries from the Soviet Union’s powerful military industrial complex were bought out by top officials from those ministries. Then, in summer 1991, democrats from the Supreme Soviet attacked this blatant attempt at nomenklatura privatization. A coup d’etat was all but unavoidable. The captains of military industry had no qualms about shedding their Communist ideology; it was their dachas they were prepared to defend tooth and nail. A nomenklatura putsch was staged in August 1991, and that soon led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev lost power when he was at his dacha in Foros, Crimea, the construction of which had met with significant opposition even during the perestroika years. He was first kept in isolation there by the people who had staged the putsch and later brought to Moscow by the victorious democrats to be subjected to public humiliation.

In 1992-93, the ideological struggle between the “democratic” President Boris Yeltsin and the “red-brown” Supreme Soviet boiled down to the media outlets controlled by both forces reporting on how the other side was building luxurious suburban dachas for themselves while the people were going hungry. The end result was the order for tanks to fire on the White House and the passage of the authoritarian 1993 Constitution.

The next round of the dacha wars was fought in the international arena. During the 1999 State Duma election campaign, reporters from the pro-Luzhkov NTV showed aerial shots of an enormous castle in southern France that they claimed belonged to the Yeltsin family. The pro-Yeltsin ORT television station aired live reports from a collection of luxurious cottages in Spain and claimed that they belonged to the owners, senior managers and leading journalists of NTV. Since then, there hasn’t been any free, balanced coverage of elections.

The next dacha war was initiated in the fall. Reports on Luzhkov’s opulent dachas outside Moscow and in Austria was a key weapon used by state-controlled media to discredit the capital city’s mayor, who had fallen out of favor with the president.

And now we have the latest dacha scandal, and this time it involves Putin. For the time being, all talk about Putin’s palace has been confined to the print media, but when we start seeing aerial shots of the castle on our television screens, you can be sure that another wave of political upheavals will soon follow.

The photographs were published by Ruleaks, a group of self-proclaimed “activists from the Pirate Party of Russia and Russian-speaking activists from other Pirate Parties around the world.” The activists organize the translation of classified documents released by Wikileaks into Russian and the publication of those and other materials on the Ruleaks website.

On a page titled “Photographs of ‘Putin’s Palace’ in Praskoveevka on the Black Sea,” several dozen photographs show a gigantic Italian-style villa, complete with colonnades, balconies, and an enclosed park with a fountain. The interior is extravagantly decorated with frescoes, elaborate chandeliers and a wealth of marble and gold trim. The palace appears to be fully furnished and includes a desk bearing the Russian coat of arms; it is identical to the desk in the prime minister’s Novo-Ogaryovo residence.

This is the first time that high-quality photographs of the villa have been published. It was previously visible from satellite imagery and photographs taken from far away, but the building’s high security made it impossible to get up close. The newly-released photographs appear to have been taken by an on-site worker.

Ruleaks underwent a DDoS attack shortly after the photographs went live on January 18, making it temporarily impossible to access the website.

The organization stipulates that it cannot confirm that the residence belongs to Vladimir Putin: “We are not prepared to confirm whose palace this is, we are only publishing photographs of the facility itself.”

The photographs come one month after St. Petersburg businessman Sergei Kolesnikov sent an open letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev alleging that a palace “for the personal use of the Prime Minister of Russia” was being built on the Black Sea. “To date this palace costs over $1 billion U.S., mainly through a combination of corruption, bribery and theft.” Kolesnikov goes on to painstakingly detail the corrupt business dealings and theft of state funds that culminated in the creation of this complex. After publishing the letter, Kolesnikov reportedly went abroad and is waiting for the president’s reaction.

The newspaper Vedomosti was able to connect with Kolesnikov and verify his claim to the allegations. Judging by the text of his letter, Kolesnikov is the former business partner of two of Putin’s friends, Nikolai Shamalov and Dmitri Gorelov. The newspaper was able to confirm that Shamalov and Gorelov did indeed have a partner named Sergei Kolesnikov. Formally, the palace belongs to Shamalov, but Kolesnikov asserts that it is intended for the prime minister. “If this palace is Shamalov’s, then why is the state spending its own money to build him roads and electrical lines?” Kolesnikov said to Vedomosti.

Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri Peskov, denied that the prime minister had any connection to the Black Sea complex. Shamalov and Gorelov did not respond to inquiries from Vedomosti.

See the full set of photographs on Ruleaks.net.

Click here for the Sergei Kolesnikov’s letter to the Russian president.