MOSCOW – A team led by Russian opposition leader Alexei A. Navalny on Tuesday published an extensive investigation describing a secret palace built for President Vladimir V. Putin on the Black Sea, with the release of the report less than 24 hours after Mr. Navalny sent to jail.
The report was the latest auction in the dramatic battle of Mr. Navalny with mr. Putin is being played in front of an online audience of millions of people, and it came as opposition supporters sought to advance the street protests planned for this weekend.
The investigation – complete with floorboards, financial details and interior photos of a compound that, according to Navalny, cost more than $ 1 billion – appears to provide the most comprehensive accounting to date of a large house that the president allegedly built for himself in the south of Russia. green beach.
The Kremlin denied the findings in the report, which went online Tuesday as a 113-minute YouTube video and a long, illustrated text version that also invited users to take photos of Mr. Kremlin. Putin’s luxury on Facebook and Instagram. The video has been viewed more than four million times on YouTube.
“They will continue to steal more, until they bankrupt the whole country,” he said. Navalny in the video, referring to Mr. Putin and his circle. “Russia sells large quantities of oil, gas, metals, fertilizers and timber – but people’s incomes are falling and falling because Putin has his palace.”
Mr. Navalny – who flew home on Sunday after being treated in Germany in August for an almost fatal poisoning in Siberia – was arrested at passport control in light of the Russians watching live broadcasts of his arrival. On Monday, Mr. Navalny was sentenced to 30 days in prison during a trial in a temporary courtroom at a Moscow police station, a portrait of a Stalin-era secret police chief on the wall behind him.
Before he was led, Mr. Navalny called on the Russians to “take to the streets” against Mr. Putin in videos his staff posted online. And on Tuesday, his staff posted the palace inquiry, which Mr. Navalny recorded while in Germany. The text in the opening frames of the video admonishes viewers to join in ‘the central streets of your cities’ on Saturday at 14:00.
“Navalny has been fighting for our rights for many years,” the text reads. “It’s our turn now to fight for him.”
Reports about a palace that for mr. Putin was built, near the resort of Gelendzhik in the Black Sea, first appeared more than a decade ago. Satellite images show an imposing, rectangular building, a large alley, a helicopter farm and other structures connected by a winding road on a remote part of the hilly coastline.
The project has long been secretly covered, and Putin’s spokesman on Tuesday reiterated his denial that Putin has a palace there. His official Black Sea residence is a humble place in the city of Sochi, 150 miles drive away.
“We already explained years ago that Putin has no palace in Gelendzhik,” Russian Dmitry S. Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian media.
Mr. Navalny submitted financial records and other evidence which, according to him, indicates that the palace was assisted by collaborators for Mr. Putin was built and called it ‘the biggest bribe in history’.
Some details have previously appeared in Russian news reports, but Mr. Navalny offered it in its populist brand. His earlier investigative reports on the wealth of the Russian elite incited him as an anti-corruption activist and opposition leader.
His team found that nearly 30 square kilometers of land around the palace were controlled by the Russian Interior Intelligence Agency, that airspace above was restricted and that the Coast Guard did not allow boats within one kilometer.
There were also new, striking depictions of Mr. Putin’s lavish lifestyle in the report.
A contractor, Mr. Navalny, leaked detailed floorboards and his team used them to create interactive, three-dimensional models of the interior. The ground floor contains a spa, a cinema, a wine cellar and an outdoor area with fountains described as an “aqua disco”. According to the report, the next floor has a larger theater, a casino hall and a windowless water pipe lounge with a pole dancing stage.
The report also describes an underground hockey rink, a church, a tunnel to the sea and a 260-foot-long bridge leading to a home.
“We are publishing the blueprints of his palace,” said Maria Pevchikh, head of Navalny’s investigation unit, wrote on Twitter, referring to Mr. Putin. “Unfortunately, the grandfather, who is crazy about his own safety, will no longer be able to use it.”
In remarks made to journalists before the publication of the report, Mr. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, Western calls for Mr. To liberate Navalny, set aside.
“We are hearing these calls, but in this case we can and will not take these statements into account,” he said. Peskov said. “It’s an absolute domestic matter, and we will not allow anyone to interfere with it.”
Mr. Navalny himself spent Monday in a security department in a notorious Moscow prison, Matrosskaya Tishina. In a message to his supporters that he had passed on to his lawyers and which was posted on Instagram, Mr. Navalny said he had no regrets about returning to Russia despite being arrested.
Regarding the special prison in which he was detained, Mr. Navalny wrote: ‘I read it in books, and now I’m here. This is a Russian life for you. ‘