Putin boosts £1billion hideout missile defences to protect ‘wife’ | World | News
An image of what are thought to be the defences installed by Putin (Image: Google)
A twitchy Vladimir Putin has reportedly splashed out more than £1 billion on missile defences to surround the remote palace he shares with his secret ‘wife’ and their two young sons. Putin’s Valdai fortress in northern Novgorod region in northwestern Russia is said to have become his main home during the Ukraine war. Putin, 73, has surrounded the residence with a bristling array of 27 modern air defence system emplacements, according to new research from Radio Liberty. Eight new air defence towers have been fitted in four months since Putin made the claim to President Donald Trump that Ukraine had attacked his luxury hideaway in December last year.
Putin is understood to share the home with former Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, 42, and their two sons, Swiss-born Ivan, 11, and Moscow-born Vladimir, six. Ms Kabaeva is widely reported to be Putin’s love interest, although the pair have not been photographed in public since the early 2000s. Ukraine denied attacking the Novgorod home and Western intelligence also dismissed the claim. Trump later said based on CIA data that the Putin residence had not been under threat.
Despite this, the paranoid Kremlin despot has tightened his defences even more after rumours that Ms Kabaeva refused to remain at this palace, 230 miles northwest of Moscow, believed to be equipped with its own nuclear bunker and hospital.
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Putin and Alina Kabaeva pictured in 2001 (Image: Getty)
In 2024, there were only seven air defence placements guarding the Valdai complex – now there are almost four times as many.
Most of the current 27 placements are believed to be Pantsir systems – costing up to £16 million each – but at least one is an S-400 system, costing as much as £800 million. Sophisticated radar also protects the Kremlin “tsar” and a family he has never revealed to ordinary Russian people. The overall cost of the equipment guarding this Putin palace is well over £1 billion.
By contrast, the entire city of Moscow with a 20 million population and the surrounding region have around 100 air defence emplacements, according to reports. Other Russian cities have far fewer.
The sprawling Valdai palace complex amid forests and lakes includes a main house and a separate residence for Kabaeva and the children.
In December, Ukraine launched a long-range drone strike on the Akron chemicals plant – key to Russian explosives manufacture – in Veliky Novgorod, 85 miles from Valdai. The Kremlin claimed more than 90 Ukrainian drones were directed at him.
Putin’s young sons are hidden under the surname Spiridonov, revealed a book by respected Russian investigative journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin. They are educated by tutors and do not attend normal schools.
Putin’s secret hideout is near the remote Lake Valdai and monastery in the remote Novgorod Oblast (Image: Getty)
“Information about the gymnast and her children is erased from state databases, the boys were given a cover surname—Spiridonov, and all the territory around the Valdai dwelling of the tsar’s family is strictly guarded,” said the book ‘The Tsar in Person. How Vladimir Putin Fooled Us All’.
The children are keen young gymnasts who have been seen on videos.
Russian academic and autocracy expert Konstantin Gaaze said Putin’s paranoid concern for security is akin to the behaviour of notorious Saddam Hussein who ruled Iraq from 1979 to 2003, before being executed in 2006.
“I think that right now [with Putin] we are closest to Saddam Hussein, both in terms of secret residences and how the system operates for protecting information about the whereabouts of the head of state and his family,” he said.
Spiridonov appears to be a family name linked to the first name of Putin’s colourful paternal grandfather Spiridon Putin, who lived from 1879 to 1965, dying on his 86th birthday.
Spiridon was the personal chef for the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, and also cooked for his widow Nadezhda before preparing meals for tyrant Josef Stalin in the Kremlin.
Earlier, he had served notorious mad monk Rasputin while working at the legendary Hotel Astoria in St Petersburg in the tsarist era.
Ukraine in February claimed to have destroyed half of all Russia’s Pantsir air defence systems.
