Putin said to have 2 identical offices

One near Moscow, the other at resort

MOSCOW — Investigative news outlet Proekt reported last week that President Vladimir Putin has built two identically appointed offices for video linkups, one at a government residence outside Moscow and the second on the shores of the Black Sea, a traditional vacation area.

The sight of Putin sitting in a sparsely furnished office, with a couple of beige armchairs, a Russian flag in the background, has become a familiar one on TV this year, as he has carried out official business tucked safely away from the coronavirus.

The confinement is atypical for Putin, usually a man of action during crises, showing up at floods or wildfires to console Russians and direct the responses.

And this time, as so many others have discovered, work from home has been a bit too confining. Although the article was based largely on anonymous sourcing and circumstantial evidence that could not be independently confirmed, it touched off a flurry of commentary in Moscow about the reported sleight of hand by Putin, a former spy.

The report cited public records of flights by presidential planes that seemed to contradict Kremlin statements about Putin’s whereabouts, as well as several unnamed sources said to have knowledge of the duplicate office in the Black Sea city of Sochi. The Kremlin denied the report.

Putin has access to a number of official residences, including the site outside Moscow, Novo-Ogaryovo, and a presidential retreat in Sochi, Bocharov Ruchey.

Before the pandemic, Putin worked frequently — and openly — in the Sochi residence, in an effort to promote the city’s tourism industry or to greet official visitors in a more relaxed setting. But the politics shifted with the pandemic, the Proekt report said.

“In such moments, in the Kremlin’s understanding, people should think the president is in the capital or close by,” working to combat the virus and not spending time at a resort.

Ekaterina Schulmann, a political commentator for the Echo of Moscow radio station, said the report, coming on the heels of other articles revealing details of the personal lives of Putin’s inner circle and family members, is further evidence of the elite infighting that has broken out lately. In recent years, both leaks and smears with misinformation have been rare in Russian domestic politics.

Proekt, founded two years ago by a veteran reporter for Russian opposition and business newspapers, Roman Badanin, describes itself as a crowdfunded site for investigative reporting about Russia. Its stories have leaned heavily on unnamed sources.

“We do what we do best — find what is hidden,” the site says of its mission. “We consider this important because almost no media remain in Russia taking on difficult and dangerous themes.”

Schulmann suggested the articles are an effort to embarrass rival clans as the children of senior officials jockey for jobs in government or state corporations that are being vacated by an older generation of insiders.

Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the presidential work spaces outside Moscow and in Sochi are not identical.

“This is not true,” he told journalists on a conference call Wednesday.

The Proekt report, Peskov said, was one of a series of recent stories about Putin’s personal life that were an “information campaign, an information attack” on the president.

“The president has many offices and no identical offices,” Peskov said.

He challenged Proekt’s use of flight records to contradict official statements about Putin’s whereabouts. Presidential planes are at times based outside Moscow, he said, but he declined to discuss specific flights, noting the movements of the head of state are classified for security reasons.

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