If someone wanted to kill Putin, there must be someone who does, they must discern between locations between the speeches and where they were shot. I recommend you actually visit the page to see the small and subtle differences between Sochi, Valdai, Novo-Ogaryovo and the Kremlin.
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How tiny details expose Putin’s location
President keeps identical offices across Russia to obscure movements - but small clues give him away
Vladimir Putin has exact replicas of his offices in different regions of Russia to conceal his whereabouts and thwart potential attacks, an investigation has claimed.
Three identical rooms in separate residences have been exposed in a report by the investigative unit Systema.
Meetings reported by the Kremlin to have taken place in Putin’s official residence at Novo-Ogaryovo, just outside Moscow, were actually held hundreds of miles away.
One replica is in Sochi on the Black Sea, and another at his sprawling forest estate in Valdai, a lakeside town halfway between Moscow and St Petersburg.
Investigators from Systema analysed 700 videos and examined leaked travel records from Putin’s entourage to pinpoint where he has been “hiding in plain sight”.
Putin has residences across Russia but conducts most of his business from four locations: the Kremlin (Moscow), Novo-Ogaryovo, Valdai and Sochi
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The location of Putin's office on his forest estate at Valdai, 250 miles north west of Moscow
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The office at Novo-Ogaryovo, Putin's official residence 20 miles west of central Moscow. Since 2022, Putin has spent less time there
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The office at the presidential Bocharov Ruchey residence in Sochi. Putin's famed Black Sea palace complex is located further north
They identified subtle differences in the interior decor of each location to determine the president’s true whereabouts.
In one Kremlin propaganda broadcast from 2020, a state TV journalist walks through a door and appears to emerge in a press conference.
But Russian viewers may have failed to notice that the two rooms were in entirely different cities.
The illusion was exposed when investigators noticed that the height of the door handle differed slightly between shots, revealing that the footage had been recorded across two locations.
Other clues include the height of the wall seam behind Putin’s desk and small changes in furniture and fittings — from the shape of a TV stand and the colour of a table to the number of ceiling vents and the position of a thermostat.
The report concludes that Putin has increasingly favoured his heavily guarded Valdai residence since the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine.
Although the existence of identical rooms has been rumoured before, analysts had not previously been able to distinguish between them.
Researchers corroborated their findings with travel records from state TV journalists — sworn to secrecy about where they film the Russian leader — and members of his security detail.
“It’s obviously about security,” Konstantin Gaaze, a Russian academic and autocracy expert, told RFL. “It would look unbecoming to put Pantsir [air defences] on the Kremlin towers… So, naturally, the main location now is Valdai.”
Kremlin aides have also falsified the dates on which footage of the Russian president was taken, according to Systema, often using canned footage taken some days or weeks before to obscure Putin’s real location and activities.
According to Systema, almost every meeting said to have been filmed at Novo-Ogaryovo this year actually took place at Valdai as Putin has become increasingly concerned about security.
The remote retreat at Valdai, reportedly home to Putin’s partner Alina Kabaeva and their two sons, sits on a peninsula and is thought to be far harder to target with missiles or drones.
Satellite images show that 12 Pantsir-S1 air defence systems were installed around Lake Valdai in summer 2024, as Kyiv stepped up its drone attacks on Russian territory.
