Posted on February 14, 2011 - by Venik

Putin’s Palace

Ahead of the presidential election in Russia, the opposition is pooling resources for an early smear campaign. The usual targets are other opposition leaders, the Communists, and the Kremlin. But the all-time favorite is, of course, Vladimir Putin. Will he run for president? Nobody knows. Gorbachev doesn’t think Putin will run. Nemtsov is certain that he will. I hope things remain status quo in the Kremlin: Putin makes a better prime minister and, by his own admissions, enjoys his job much more than he did when he was president. But the opposition doesn’t want to take any chances and, greased with foreign donations, appears ready to do battle.

In the past few weeks we have had the pleasure of seeing several small-scale PR attacks in the Kremlin’s general direction. First, one of the cops who arrested Nemtsov at a protest rally in Moscow and who initially alleged that Nemtsov resisted arrest, seemed to have changed his story during a court deposition. Then he changed his story again and said that he was misunderstood. This little courtroom performance by a lowly patrolman in such a high-profile case is suspicious. He got fired, of course, but I don’t think he will have to struggle for money.

In January Nemtsov and comrades filed a defamation suit against Putin for something that Putin said during his yearly televised Q&A session last year. Putin’s lawyer pointed out that Nemtsov and two other plaintiffs never seemed to care about negative accounts of their questionable financial past published over the past two decades by a number of printed and online sources, including Wikipedia. The judge agreed with the defense that the plaintiffs were using the court for political purposes.  Nemtsov called Wikipedia “Internet trash” and said he will appeal the ruling. Good luck with that.

Then there was a brief media circus involving Russia’s favorite ballerina in the heavy-weight class Anastasia Volochkova over her very public withdrawal from the ranks of Putin’s United Russia party. On a live radio show Bolshoi’s former prima ballerina announced her decision and reinforced it with some rather strong street language. Now, I have nothing against Volochkova. She is not fat and everything about her is wonderful: her art and the nude photos she recently posted on her LiveJournal blog. And of course she has every right to leave the party and make a big stink about it, if she is that unhappy. The problem, however, was lack of a clear explanation. What exactly happened that pissed her off so much?

Officially, Volochkova claimed that she was “tricked” by United Russia’s officials into signing an open letter condemning Russia’s jailed oligarch Khodorkovsky. Now she says “in reality, I respect Mr Khodorkovsky very much…” Well, that’s also fine, but she signed that letter five years ago and until a few weeks ago seemed perfectly content with Khodorkovsky rotting in jail. Suddenly and for no apparent reason, she develops such deep respect for the man? I must be missing something here. For the past few years Volochkova’s career has been declining. After being fired from Bolshoi for being too heavy, she sued and won. Bolshoi was ordered to give Volochkova her job back and pay back salary, which it did, but hasn’t offered Volochkova any roles for the past six years. While technically she is still Bolshoi’s employee, her income flows primarily from solo performances, television roles and public appearances.

One of the latest anti-Kremlin PR stunts was the story about the so-called “Putin’s palace” – an eight-million-square-foot government residence being built not far from Sochi. The cost of the project is estimated at around one billion US dollars. Looking at the photos of the palace I had one big question: if I was building such a mansion for my personal use, why would I stick Russia’s double-headed golden eagle and other official state paraphernalia on every door, wall and ceiling? It would be very uncomfortable living in such a place while being investigated for misappropriation of federal funds. It seemed more logical that the palace was intended for official government use. I mean, nobody complains if the US government, for example, builds another super-bunker. The Russians prefer palaces, that’s all. Also, building a personal palace just doesn’t strike me as Putin’s cup of tea. Now, if someone would have suggested that he was building a personal nuclear submarine or a private intercontinental supersonic bomber, I might have been more inclined to take the allegation seriously.

The construction contract was signed in 2005 between the Presidential property management office and private construction firms. The project, along with Sochi Olympics, is a part of the effort by the government to raise the international profile and tourist appeal of southern Russia. This way when someone tells you “let’s go to Russia”, you will think about palm trees, five-star hotels and tall blonds in mini bikinis at a warm Black Sea resort, rather than about bearded, unwashed Chechen suicide bombers. The palace issue was raised by a little-known St. Petersburg-based businessman Sergei Kolesnikov, who complained about the project in an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev. Once again, the reasons for this unhappiness were not immediately apparent. Whenever a Russian businessman – especially someone working in real estate or construction – starts talking about poor starving orphans abandoned by the state, I get all misty-eyed… from laughing too hard. It would seem Mr. Kolesnikov was under the impression that Putin was building a personal villa. Maybe Kolesnikov also wanted one, or maybe his construction company didn’t get the cut – we will never know.

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