But unlike US facilities, the Black Sea complex was privately funded and remains privately owned.

The US president has an emergency bunker beneath the White House, and Mount Weather in Virginia. This is intended for someone to survive or escape.'Īll leaders of nuclear states make plans for extreme contingencies. 'This tunnel set-up has all kinds of safety and security,' said Thaddeus Gabryszewski, a structural engineer familiar with defensive structures who reviewed the diagrams for Insider.

The lower tunnel includes a moving walkway leading to the exit. Two entrances to the underground tunnel complex are visible on the hillside beneath Putin's palace. The exits from those tunnels are visible just below the palace complex, on the bare cliff rising up from the beach: 'So knowing that his legitimacy is not entirely secured by elections, he is going to seek to maximize his personal safety through a complex of well-defended personal residences.' Kimmage, a former State Department official who worked on Russia and Ukraine policy. 'Putin has a lot of anxiety about being the not-entirely-legitimate leader of Russia,' said Michael C.

An expert who reviewed the tunnel plans saw signs of Putin's obsession with survival at a time other strongmen were falling. The architectural plans show the tunnels encased in thick concrete are supplied with enough fresh water, ventilation and extensive cables to support VIP occupants for days or weeks at a time. The underground complex beneath Putin's palace consists of two separate tunnels connected by an elevator that descends roughly 50 meters below the surface. Today, Insider is publishing annotated versions of the diagrams with English-language translations, which can be viewed below. They were viewable online as late as 2016.

Metro Style, a now-defunct Russian contractor, posted the diagrams to their website to showcase their work in the early 2010's. In fact, they were posted publicly to the Russian internet. They failed to hide plans showing two elaborate tunnels running beneath the palace complex - plans that any competent state-security apparatus would fight tooth-and-nail to keep secret. It often indicates a user profile.īut, despite all these princely luxuries and castle-like defenses, the palace's builders appear to have neglected one crucial detail. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.

Bunker buster good as gone