Raging wildfires threaten Putin’s ‘£1,000,000,000 Black Sea palace’
A forest fire tearing through a Russian resort town is threatening to burn down Vladimir Putin’s nearly £1,000,000,000 clifftop palace.
Three wildfires stretching some three hectares have raged since yesterday morning, Russian news agency Interfax reported.
Intense heat, strong winds and flammable greenery have turned forests in the area on the Black Sea into tinderboxes, with arson suspected to be the cause.
Firefighters were called at about 10am local time after smoke was seen billowing out of a forest by Dzhanhot farm.
While the fire was tamed at 6:45pm, two more had erupted, with calls to fire officials put in at 3:09pm along Rodnikova Street and a third in a forest near Mount Neksis Gelendzhik at 5:15pm.
The well-to-do resort town is the home of the Russian president’s allegedly 17,691 square meter palace on the Gelendzhik Bay.
A swimming pool, spa and sauna are among the amenities said to be inside the main building.
The complex also includes a greenhouse, a helipad, an ice palace, a church, an amphitheatre, a petrol station, an 80-metre (260 ft) bridge and a special bunker inside the mountain with a tasting room.
A man, 40, has been detained on suspicion of arson, with his motivation for sparking the fire unclear.
Locals who own fire extinguishers have been asked to help battle the blaze razing Markotkh Ridge by authorities, with 195 people joining the firefighting efforts.
‘If you have a knapsack and forest fire extinguishers and want to help firefighters in the fight against a forest fire on the Markotkh Ridge, then… join the firefighting,’ city administrators said on Telegram yesterday evening.
They added that a Be-200 amphibious aircraft from the Ministry of Emergency Situations has been dispatched, joining a firefighting plane and two Mi-8 helicopters already at the scene.
Krasnodar regional news outlet Kuban News said the flames are being worsened by winds of up to 30mph, with the wildfires singing about 50 hectares as of this morning.
‘The fire spread to the top of the mountain,’ said the emergency ministry. ‘For now, there is no threat to settlements and infrastructure.
’Work on extinguishing the fire does not stop even for a minute.’
Though ‘Putin’s palace’, as it’s known in the press, has never been officially confirmed as the president’s, multiple insiders have claimed such.
First brought to public attention by whistleblower Sergei Kolesnikov in 2010, a raft of media investigations have revealed a luxurious mansion built purely for Putin’s own enjoyment.
An investigation by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti Corruption Foundation (FBK) found it cost about 100 billion rubles (£820,000) to build.
The Kremlin has long denied this, saying it is owned by elite businessmen who cannot be named.
General Gennady Lopyrev, 69, who is thought to have inside knowledge of the palace, died suddenly in jail earlier this month.
He was serving a decade-long jail term after a military court accused him of bribe-taking and illegal possession of ammunition in 2017.
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