Vladimir Putin has evolved in its relations with West since he became president of Russia at the beginning of the 21st century. In his first years at the helm of the country, the president still maintained good relations with many Western nations and it was at that time that he had a palace erected in shores of the Black Sea. Actually, the most disturbing part was a huge underground lair under the residence whose maps have been publicly aired on the internet by the engineering company responsible for the project, according to Business Insider.
The palace had a cost of about 1,150 million euros and has its own church, a winery and a casino. The building extends over a plot of about 190,000 square meters over the cliff on top of a hill that leaves the Black Sea At his feet. It was an investigation into the environment of the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny that revealed years ago that the palace even has a stripper bar and an ice rink to play hockey that Putin likes so much.
The lavish complex, surrounded by hundreds of hectares of forest and isolated with a no-fly zone, has several tunnels with ventilation and sewage system that Putin ordered to be built about 50 meters below the surface, concerned about the dangers of a possible world war or a large-scale attack on him. Although in the years in which it was designed and built it got along well with the West, the fortification was designed for the worst scenarios.
Despite the confidentiality of the place, the company that produced it seems that it did not take a basic precaution, which is to keep the plans under safekeeping until they have finally come to light. It is about Metro Style, a now-defunct Russian contractor, who published the plans on his website to show his work in the early 2010s and which have been seen in 2016.
The drawings show two tunnels running under the palace complex. They are “blueprints that any competent state security apparatus would fight tooth and nail to keep secret,” says Business Insider, the outlet that published this story.
One of the two tunnels leads directly to the beach via a walkway. The second tunnel has supports for cables that could be used to carry electricity and fiber optics to a command post. The exits of both tunnels (the two passageways are approximately 40 and 60 meters long, respectively, and 6 meters wide) are not visible on the mountain they are hiding in.
Michael C Kimmage, A former State Department official who worked on Russia and Ukraine policy told Business Insider that Putin has established a network of residences that are as far from the center of the country as possible. “Therefore, a tunnel system within the Black Sea complex makes a lot of sense. Even without an active threat.”
The plans were removed from the Metro Style website in 2016, but were still visible on the Wayback Machine, an online content archive. One of the users who had access to the documents told Business Insider that he belonged to a group called “Sect Z” and explained that “We are tired of Putin’s stupid face and want to show his paranoid underground complex.” His intention, he added, is that the images accelerate the “end of the regime.”
