August 5, 2022 was a day like so many others in Ukraine. First light revealed the devastation of a night of Russian bombardment.
Russian attacks on a residential area of Mykolaiv that morning caused “significant destruction”, the region’s governor said at the time, leaving at least 10 injured.
That same day in Moscow, bureaucrats in President Vladimir Putin’s office were preoccupied with an issue far removed from the brutal war in Ukraine.
“The Transport Administration received a call,” wrote a Kremlin official, “about the need to install Hoist HD-3800 and Hoist HD-3200 gym equipment instead of Abductor-Standard and Abductor-Technogym in the sports-health wagon n° 021-78630. »
Recently leaked documents suggest the ‘sport-health wagon’ is being used by none other than Putin himself.
Remarkably little is known about Putin’s private life. His public image is carefully maintained, as was evident in the days following Evgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny. But a treasure trove of documents and photographs obtained exclusively by the London-based Russian investigative group, the Dossier Center, and shared with CNN, Süddeutsche Zeitung and German public broadcasters NDR and WDR, reveals details about the Kremlin shrouds of the public view, and the extent to which Putin’s paranoia has created a cloistered existence.
The Dossier Center is backed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former Russian oil magnate in exile turned Kremlin critic.
The fact that Putin uses a train is well known. The Kremlin itself released footage of meetings held on board, in a lavishly decorated meeting room. However, the contents of the approximately 20 other carriages on the train are a closely guarded state secret.
The Dossier Center says the leaked documents came from an insider at Zircon Service, a Russian company contracted by Russian Railways, the state-owned train operator, to outfit cars destined for the office of the Russian president.
Among the parts of the train detailed is car number 021-78630. A glossy brochure made by Zircon himself shows a luxurious gym and spa on wheels designed for Putin, according to the Dossier Center.
The car was completed in 2018. At the time the photos were taken, it was fitted with Italian-made Technogym weights and resistance equipment – which will later, it seems, be replaced by Hoist-made machines. by a company based in the United States.
Out the door, further down the car, a full cosmetology center is outfitted with a massage table and all sorts of high-end beauty equipment — including, according to a leaked document, a radio frequency machine used to improve skin tension. The room itself, Records Center documents suggest, is equipped to help prevent the use of listening devices.
Finally, a tiled bathroom has a full Turkish steam bath and shower.
Among the documents obtained by the Record Center are letters linking the equipment of the wagons, including the gym car, directly to officials at the highest levels of Putin’s administration.
The Kremlin flatly denies the Dossier Center’s findings, telling CNN, “President Putin has no such car in his use or possession.”
CNN also contacted Zircon Service and Russian Railways for comment, but did not hear back.
On November 2, 2018, a meeting was held to assess the remaining work to be done on the gymnasium car, number 021-78630. Minutes of that meeting, also obtained by the Dossier Center, show that in addition to executives from Zircon Service and Russian Railways, 10 officials from the Federal Security Service (FSO), the organization tasked with protecting the Russian President, were present.
Dozens of maintenance contracts leaked to the Dossier Center, some of which mention the gym car number 021-78630, indicate that any work on the train cars must be coordinated with the SFO.
In 2020, a senior Russian Railways official, Dmitry Pegov, wrote to SFO Deputy Director Oleg Klimentiev, begging him to consider proposals he had sent for accommodation to be built on two carriages.
“To date, approval for none of the options has been received from the OFS, which does not allow us to start the procedure for concluding a contract and starting the construction of wagons,” said writes Pegov. “I ask you, dear Oleg Ateistovich, to review the proposed concepts and inform us of the decision made.”
CNN’s attempts to reach Pegov and Klimentiev for comment were unsuccessful.
According to a former SFO engineer and captain, Gleb Karakulov, who left the country last year and was interviewed by the Dossier Center in total secrecy, Putin has increasingly turned to road trips. train to avoid being followed.
“The plane, as soon as it takes off, it immediately crosses the flight radar,” Karakulov said in the interview, which was taped last December. “The train, it serves to hide these movements in a way.”
Karakulov said he started working on the train, installing communications equipment, around 2014. It became much more frequent, according to his account, in the second half of 2021, as Russia prepared for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
According to Karakulov, Putin’s train has since the start of the war spent considerable time parked near Valdai, a remote Russian region between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Poutine maintains a large residence in the region, known for its bucolic lake and forests.
“Our employees were in quarantine specifically for this special train,” Karakulov told Dossier Center. “Since the beginning of the war, guys have said that they have gone somewhere in the direction of Valdai for 40 or even 45 days.
“Maybe there won’t be a train departure on a particular watch, but people are always ready.”
Confidentiality, however, was not total. The vulnerability came in the form of amateur trainspotters.
“There is a ghost train on our country’s railways,” wrote one train watcher alongside an image of what appears to be Putin’s train that he posted on rutrain.com. “It’s not in the timetables or in the Russian rail systems.”
They are able to identify the train partly through its use of two locomotives and partly through a feature identified in the brochure produced by Zircon Service. A distinctive white dome, which the Dossier Center says contains advanced communications antennae, is prominently visible on one of the cars.
Domes do not appear on regular Russian trains. But they were visible in an official video released by the Kremlin in 2019, on a carriage of a train specially chartered by Russian Railways, as Putin crossed the new Kerch Bridge between mainland Russia and occupied Crimea.
It is through the image of these domes that we know that Putin’s train bears the ordinary exterior markings of a Russian train. It has been spotted – and photographed – many times over the years by amateur train spotters.
Trying to figure out Putin’s mindset is inherently speculative. The best we can do is turn to those who have spent time with him.
Abbas Gallyamov is among them, having served for years as one of Putin’s speechwriters.
“I think his sense of political insecurity has made him feel more and more physically insecure,” Gallyamov said from Israel, where he now lives. “There are a lot of people who are very close to him and who choose this insecurity to their advantage, by him, look, there is a threat here, a threat here, a threat here.”
“Paranoia,” as Gallyamov describes it, drove the Russian leader to build more and more walls around himself.
“He loses the war, he loses politics, he loses popularity,” Gallyamov says. “He makes more and more enemies, commits more and more crimes. He feels that he is surrounded by enemies. And psychologically, he wants to feel protected against all these things.
The distance created by these protections, Gallyamov speculates, could be one of Putin’s most immediate problems. And, ironically, that could be a reason for the extreme comfort built for its train.
“He travels very little,” Gallyamov said. “He loses contact with the country. The people in his administration are worried about it.
“They (Kremlin officials) understand that this is one of the issues leading to a decline in his popularity. So they’re probably trying to do (things) so he can leave his residence and travel somewhere as comfortably as possible.
This near-isolation approach was undermined by Wagner’s short-lived mutiny. In the days following the rebellion, Putin attended an unusually high number of meetings and was even seen greeting members of the public.
It’s unclear whether he used his special train to get around – but the turmoil likely didn’t help alleviate his reported “paranoia”.
CNN’s Katharina Krebs contributed to this report. Graphics by Alicia Johnson, CNN.
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