Mikhail KlimentyevTASS via Getty Images
America: Citizens dressed in beaver pelts just stormed our capitol like it was a Best Buy on Black Friday. Political unrest is at an apex.
Russia: Hold my cognac.
Anti-corruption activist and Kremlin critic Alexi Navalny is sitting in a Russian jail cell at the moment after being detained after he arrived on January 17 from Berlin, where he had been recovering from a Soviet-era nerve agent poison attack in August 2020 that Navalny and other independent media publications claim was ordered by Putin.
Navalny fell into a coma on the flight from from Siberia to Moscow and the plane was forced to make an emergency landing.
After the 44-year-old was jailed and placed in pre-trial detention for 30 days, his team released a two-hour long video that’s amassed nearly 50 million views on YouTube detailing Putin’s shady dealings, which includes spending illegally diverted funds on a cartoonish Black Sea Palace that cost at least 100 billion rubles ($1.35 billion).
The video claims that the property was paid for “with the largest bribe in history.”
A new investigation released today by Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation alleges that a huge estate near Gelendzhik, a Black Sea resort town, was built for Putin at a cost of at least 100 billion rubles, or $1.35 billion at the current exchange rate.https://t.co/GyejY9q0LQ
— Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (@RFERL) January 19, 2021
The property, which is said to be 39 times larger than Monaco, “was built so that it could not be approached either by land, sea, or air” and features amenities like a strip club and $800 toilet brushes.
https://twitter.com/hypsoline/status/1351570047014199302?s=20
Via BBC:
The report describes various details of the property, and claims it features a casino, an underground ice hockey complex and a vineyard.
“It has impregnable fences, its own port, its own security, a church, its own permit system, a no-fly zone, and even its own border checkpoint,” Mr Navalny says in the video.
“It is a separate state within Russia,” he adds. “And in this state there is a single, irreplaceable tsar. Putin.”
The investigation also alleges that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) owns 27 square miles of land surrounding the private residence.
https://twitter.com/Andrew__Roth/status/1351528662189936641?s=20
Bro, is that Dance, Dance Revolution?? Are we at the most expensive home in Russia or the Springfield mall in 2004? Grow up, dude.
With its head @navalny now jailed @fbkinfo posts its biggest ever investigation into "Putin's palace" near Gelendzhik. Floorplans seem to suggest it's the biggest home in Russia, with wine cave, theater, gym, pool, "aquadisco" & hockey rink, & cost $1.35bn https://t.co/QOgfk5oe5t pic.twitter.com/B5WHOx1x2l
— Alec Luhn (@AlecLuhn) January 19, 2021
Russian diplomat Dmitry Peskov denies the report that has gone viral internationally: “These are all absolutely unfounded claims,” he said. “This is pure nonsense and… there’s nothing else in it.”
I choose to believe the person who wasn’t involved in poisoning one of its own citizens, but you can make your own call on the matter.