Part of Vladimir Putin‘s summer residence has been demolished with the Russian leader seemingly increasingly reluctant to visit the property on the Black Sea because of the dangers posed by Ukrainian drone attacks, it has been reported.
Independent Russian investigative outlet Proekt (Project) said satellite imagery shows that the main building of the Bocharov Ruchey property in Sochi had been demolished in February and March, leaving a pit and construction equipment in its place.
Completed in 1955, Bocharov Ruchey is in the Tsentralny district of Sochi, and has played host to visits by numerous world leaders.
It is located around 160 miles south of what has been dubbed “Putin’s palace,” a $1 billion site which came to widespread public attention in 2021 in a film by the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny‘s Anti Corruption Foundation (FBK). Putin and the Kremlin denied that the palace belonged to him.
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Newsweek cannot confirm the veracity of Proekt’s claims and has contacted the Kremlin for comment.
After the start of the building work on Bocharov Ruchey, Putin, who turned 72 on Monday, held an official meeting at a reception house located at the complex with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, on March 6.
Grossi has raised concerns about the potential for an accident at the nuclear power plants in Ukraine that are caught in the crosshairs of hostilities.
This meeting was Putin’s last visit to the site, according to Proekt, which reported that the Russian leader “fears for his life” after numerous drone attacks on sites in Sochi, which is located in Russia’s Krasnodar region, which is near Ukraine.
The outlet said that up until the end of first year of the war, the aircraft he traveled on could be monitored using live flight tracker Flightradar24. Since September 2023, planes used by Putin have been hiding their location amid repeated strikes by Ukrainian drones on Russian territory.
The outlet also said that the number of Putin’s visits to the Sochi residence had dwindled since the start of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2023 he only spent eight days at Bocharov Ruchey, compared with an average of over 30 days annually before the COVID-19 pandemic, with the most frequent visits in May, September, October and November.
The outlet also said that Putin did not even make his regular trip to the site for the birthday in May of Alina Kabaeva, a former gymnast with whom he is rumored to have fathered two sons.