Where, in fact, is Putin? How the Kremlin hides the location of the Russian president using identical offices – VIDEO
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the government via video conference at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence near Moscow, Russia, on June 25, 2025. PHOTO: Gavriil Grigorov/AP/Profimedia
A media investigation reveals how the Kremlin has repeatedly misled the public about the whereabouts of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who uses three nearly identical offices located in different parts of the country.
The journalistic investigation was carried out by The systemthe investigative team of the Russian-language service of Radio Free Europe (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – RFE/RL).
It identified numerous discrepancies in video footage and official information about the leader's travels from the Kremlin, showing that many of the meetings claimed to have taken place near Moscow were actually filmed in Sochi or Valdai.
And Putin seems to increasingly prefer the isolated Valdai residence amid the ongoing war in Ukraine and increasingly frequent drone attacks on Russian targets, the quoted source notes.
The material produced by Systema starts from a report broadcast five years ago. A Russian state television journalist informs viewers of his interview with President Vladimir Putin. An inscription in one corner of the screen reads “Novo-Ogariovo” – the main presidential residence, located in a suburb of Moscow – and images show Putin walking towards his office door and reaching for the doorknob. And here's the clue: the location of the handle and a few other details reveal that the filming was by no means made in Novo-Ogariovo, RFE/RL's investigation finds.
In fact, the footage was shot more than 1,500 kilometers south, in an almost identical office at Bociarov Rucei, a state residence in Sochi on the Black Sea coast.
Hundreds of videos analyzed
Systema discovered that there are not one, but two copies of Putin's office in Novo-Ogariovo: one in Sochi and the other in Valdai (about halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg), and that the Kremlin has lied about the president's whereabouts hundreds of times in recent years.
Moreover, in most of the cases documented by Systema, the meetings that apparently took place in Novo-Ogariovo were actually filmed in Sochi or Valdai, a lakeside town in a forested landscape favored by Putin since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and which led to intensified Ukrainian drone attacks on military and industrial targets in Russia.
The investigation reveals a highly secretive Kremlin that misled the public about Putin's whereabouts consistently for at least several years. It also raises questions about the actual timing of the meetings and discussions that the Putin administration is making public.
In an investigation published in August, Systema revealed that at least five meetings that the Kremlin said took place in April or May were actually filmed months before. Putin continued the ploy this fall: Since August, the Kremlin has released at least seven old videos of the president's meetings, presenting them as recent, Systema found.
Systema reached these conclusions about the three nearly identical offices after scrutinizing some 700 videos released by the Putin administration or aired on state television and after examining images posted on the Kremlin's website.
