According to media reports, Russian President Vladimir Putin may be about to get another seafront pleasure palace as the Kremlin tries to acquire a large parcel of land in Georgia.
Aslan Bzhania, the de-facto leader of the breakaway Abkhazia region on the Black Sea, claims Putin himself has ordered him to hand over a “beachside paradise” near the resort city of Pitsunda.
According to the Daily Mail, a 49-year lease has been signed in secret, handing over control of 186 hectares of land, 115 hectares of water, and a nearby military camp to Putin’s Federal Protection Service, sparking protests among locals.
It is expected that Putin will use the site, which houses a summer hideaway built by Josef Stalin and frequented by Nikita Khrushchev, to construct a new home for himself, after opponents exposed his £1 billion palace located just 200 miles up the coast.
Bzhania told enraged locals that he is powerless to refuse the request because his fledgling government cannot survive without the support of Russia’s military, despite the fact that it is battered by the Ukraine war.
“I can say for sure that the Russian Federation can do without this dacha,” he said.
“But can we do without the support of the Russian Federation, its armed forces and its structures that guard our borders here? This is a big question.”
He admitted: “This is a place where our main guest (Putin) comes,” Daily Mail reported.
The 69-year-old Russian president has visited the region at least twice, once in 2013 and once in 2017.
“There are now new technologies, new security conditions for protected persons. In accordance with this, such work is, of course, needed there,” Bzhania added.
This is interpreted as an acknowledgement that a new palace will be built on the site of the former Soviet summer dacha.
