Updated 01.59 | Published 00.50
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The Kremlin has denied that the secret luxury palace in the Black Sea belongs to Vladimir Putin.
Now new evidence has emerged.
The president’s bodyguards usually take a run in the area, reveals a leak from the training app Strava.
Several of Putin’s bodyguards have inadvertently shared their location while at secret facilities in recent years. The culprit in the drama is the training app Strava, which has been downloaded to the bodyguards’ mobile phones on the occasions.
The app is for exercisers to be able to save and compare their runs with themselves and their friends. In this way, it can also function as a kind of tracker.
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full screen Aerial view of Navalny’s review.
Analysis of running activities recorded by Putin’s bodyguards shows that in the years 2020-2024 they were repeatedly in the vicinity of a private palace located on a cliff in the Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik, reports The World.
A bodyguard ran three days in a row in front of the palace’s entrance earlier this year, according to data from the app.
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full screenPutin behind the wheel with his bodyguards in close company. Photo: Vyacheslav Prokofyev / AP
Putin: Not my property
Russian opposition leader and now deceased Alexei Navalny claimed in 2021 that Putin owned the palace, which reportedly cost over a billion euros to build.
Putin then said that neither he nor anyone close to him owns or has ever owned the palace.
The same app also connects Putin to another secret residence in northwestern Russia, just 30 kilometers from the border with Finland. The property consists of three main buildings, two helipads, a private waterfall, several yacht docks and a farm with cows, writes Newsweek.
A bodyguard from the Federal Protective Service Putin clocked a six-kilometer run in 2022 that began and ended in front of the complex. Another bodyguard ran the same year on the road leading up to the entrance. Putin has denied that the residence is his property.
Secret residence kilometers from the Finnish border.
Trump and Harris also tracked
Several celebrities have been mapped thanks to their bodyguards using the training app, such as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and Emanuel Macron, writes Le Monde.
In a statement, the security company Secret Service states that there have been no security breaches or threats against Trump or Biden following the leak from the app.
“We will evaluate the information,” the statement reads.
