Putin wants to live for ever

Mark O'Neill April 19, 2026 23:09

Last year 9.8 million Russians earned less than 183 euros a month, the official poverty line, while the state spent 118 billion euros on the war with Ukraine. Each day 1,200 Russian soldiers are killed or badly wounded in the war.

For whom are they fighting? Their president, Vladimir Putin, 73, is one of the country’s richest men, with a lakeside palace worth US$1 billion and billions in dollars in secret company accounts in Lichtenstein.

Fearful of infection, poison and assassination, he spends most of his time in his palace in Valdai on 100 hectares of a peninsula next to two lakes between Moscow and St Petersburg. It was built in 1980.

This comes from “Kremlin Confidential: the True Putin” by Vincent Jauvert, an investigative reporter, published this month in France.

“He remains isolated with his bodyguards, his companion, their two sons and their nannies and teachers. He runs the country at a distance, without regular direct contact with his advisers, generals or ministers,” he wrote.

He quoted Gleb Karakulov, a captain in the FSO responsible for establishing secure communications for Putin; he fled to Turkey in October 2022 in protest at the invasion of Ukraine. He and his family live in hiding.

“Our president has lost contact with the world. For two years, he has lived in an information cocoon, living most of his time in his residences, especially Valdai, which the media correctly call bunkers. He has a pathological fear for his life. He surrounds himself with an impenetrable barrier of quarantines and a vacuum of information.

“For him, all that counts are his own life and those of the people close to him,” he said.

Like his model Josef Stalin, he wants to live for ever. He has ordered millions of rubles invested in medical research to create replacement organs. One of those involved in this work is Maria, his daughter by his former wife and an endocrinologist.

A model is Song Ping, a veteran Chinese Communist Party leader who died on March 4 this year, aged 109. Like Moscow, Beijing is investing heavily in medical research to prolong the life of its leaders. Some Chinese believe that, by the end of his life, few of Song’s organs were his own.

Putin’s companion in the dacha is Alina Kabaeva, an Olympic gold medallist in gymnastics 31 years his junior.

She has given him two sons, Ivan, 10, and Vladimir, 7. Ivan was born in 2016 in a private clinic in Lugano, Switzerland. Putin disappeared from public life for 10 days to be present for the birth of his first son.

Like their father, the two sons have personal chefs and eat and drink only from their own plates, cup and glasses. On foreign visits, Putin sticks to this rule, taking his personal chef with him.

The most visible symbol of his colossal fortune is his palace on a promontory on the Black Sea coast in Krasnodar Krai. near Sochi. It was built in the Italianate style by Italian architect Lanfranco Cirillo. In the palace complex is a house with 17,700 square metres, a dozen bedrooms and Putin’s master bedroom of 260 square metres. It includes a large indoor swimming pool, spa, Turkish baths, a casino and cinema.

The airspace around the palace is closed to aircraft. It has its own power and oil supply, and a lift leading to the beach.

Less visible are his holdings in a company in Liechtenstein – Lirus Investment Holdings. It owes its wealth to a 35 per cent commission charged on Russian institutions who purchase medical equipment from a company called Petromed. Putin holds 94 per cent of the shares in Lirus, under another name.

Its wealth grew after Putin, as president, assigned enormous sums to the medical budget, of which 35 per cent went to his firm. It was Lirus that purchased the land to build the palace on the Black Sea.

Jauvet wrote: “like the vast majority of Soviet people, Putin grew up in poverty and with a fascination with the abundance of the West. He loves luxury. He saw oligarchs and high officials buy sumptuous properties on the Cote d’Azur, yachts, Patek Philippe watches and Bentleys. Now it is his turn.

“While he has built his autocratic political system, he has put in place a complex system to embezzle funds for his own profit, inspired by the methods of the Mafia.”

Jauvet also explained the plan to conquer Ukraine. From autumn 2021, agents of the GRU – military intelligence – in plain clothes were sent to Kyiv. Guided by their Ukrainian agents, they were to capture the country’s 30 top officials.

They would either put them on show trials or execute them. Putin had prepared puppets to serve as the new president and other posts. The operation would take a maximum of 48 hours.

Four years and two months since the invasion, the toll of Russian dead and wounded has reached 1.25 million. One Russian captured by the Ukrainians said: “we do not know what we are fighting for. Why are we killing our brothers?”

Mark O'Neill

A Hong Kong-based writer, teacher and speaker.