Exposed: Putin’s extravagant moving palace
Anti-corruption organization the Dossier Center recently leaked explosive images of President Putin’s $75 million covert armored train, revealing a feature-packed fitness and beauty carriage, as well as other top-secret details. The deluxe 22-carriage train has reportedly become Putin’s transport of choice for longer-distance journeys in Russia since, unlike his presidential plane, it can’t be tracked or shot down. Click or scroll through to get the lowdown on the warmongering leader’s mobile mansion and take a sneaky peak inside.
Putin’s Soviet-era train carriages
Like fortresses on rails, heavy-duty armored trains were often used by the leaders of the USSR to get around the country. Leonid Brezhnev traveled across Siberia in one back in 1974 to meet with US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Eight carriages that make up Putin’s alleged mobile palace date from the era of the Soviet Union or shortly after its collapse, according to the Dossier Center, which monitors the criminal activities of Kremlin officials and is run by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky. These rail cars house garages, communication hubs and a diesel power system, as well as the train’s restaurants.