Kremlin slams bogus expose of Putin’s ‘palace’

Moscow: Reports about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “palace” are absurd, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday, adding that such scams were largely aimed at extracting money from the public.

“There are some phone numbers at the end of this miraculous report, as well as a request to send money. It seems that this is the main objective of these sorts of publications and fake investigations,” Peskov emphasized.
“We would like to urge everyone – particularly given the large number of views – to think twice before sending money to such… scammers,” the Kremlin spokesman added.

He pointed out that the Kremlin had seen the report released by blogger Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. “We have been aware for a long time of information attacks on the head of state, they took place in the past and unfortunately, [these] attacks will go on,” the Kremlin spokesman noted. According to him, “in this case, the president was blamed for non-existing things.” “The Russian president declares his property every year, his declarations are published on an annual basis,” the spokesman stressed. In his view, the report “offers nothing new” because “the bogus story first came up three or four years ago.”

“The only novelty is that the report involved editing,” Peskov went on to say. “The footage of Putin bathing in the Yenisei River, which had gone all around the world, was added to pictures of a pool in some palace,” he said.

Peskov also declined to comment on the report’s references to the archives of the state security service of the German Democratic Republic (Stasi), which concerned Putin’s fellow officers at the time of his service in Germany. “I didn’t go that deep into it and I don’t know what’s it all about,” Peskov said.