A Little Place
in the Country
LITTLE DID THE locals know what lay ahead when the bulldozers trundled through their village, cutting huge swathes through the forest, taking care to preserve the centuries-old pine and birch trees. These were the woods where they had played as children, courted as teenagers and gathered fuel for their fires to stave off the bitterly cold Russian winters. In earlier days, you would hardly have noticed their village, Kalchuga, home to a community of just a few dozen souls inhabiting picturesque wooden cottages. Even today, it draws scant attention from those who speed by on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye highway. What is unmissable, though, are the high walls and security fencing surrounding the nouveau mansions which have sprung up on either side of Lovers Lane, where villagers once lay, shielded by the trees from intrusion.
In modern times, these sylvan glades have long attracted Russia's elite. Now the exclusive fiefdom of some of the country’s richest men and women – oligarchs, pop stars and politicians – Novo-Ogaryovo was once the haunt of the Soviet political elite, housing Premier Malenkov, alongside senior members of the CPSU's Central Committee. In 2000, it became home of the country’s new leader, Vladimir Putin. Now, bristling with antennae, surrounded by high-tech forts and protected by a small army, this is Putin’s ‘dacha’ which – far removed from the traditional country cottage – serves both as the Russian leader’s office and entertainment centre, and is as grand as any European or American country house.
Putin kept the estate when he stepped down as president in 2008 to become prime minister. He needed a place close to his family home, a mansion buried deep in the woods, just as much as his successor Dmitri Medvedev had, in order to receive some of the world's most influential leaders. In earlier times, this is where George W. Bush came to argue with Putin about whether or not Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons. The former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder brought his wife here to thank Putin and his wife for facilitating their adoption of a Russian baby named Viktoria. Like many others, they were transported from the main gate up to the dacha in golf buggies.
Putin is not fond of unexpected guests, but to those who really interest him he is a superb host. The privileged few who have witnessed Putin at home will testify that in a domestic setting they found a very different character from the tough-guy politician we see on the international stage. The world’s best-known Russian once allowed Bush to drive him around the estate in his beloved reconditioned Volga – although he grabbed the steering wheel when the American President’s driving turned dangerous; he poured tea and buttered toast for the German photographer Konrad Muller, and fed apples to Obereg – the favourite of his five stallions – in front of a young training partner who turned up regularly for a session in unarmed combat. Lord Browne’s lasting memory of his visit there to say goodbye after his demise as boss of BP, is of Putin’s black Labrador, Koni, walking in circles around his ankles.
It is ironic, perhaps, that Russia’s oligarchs are among the elite who live here on Putin’s doorstep. For these are the very people he holds in contempt for having taken advantage of Boris Yeltsin’s plight by buying up the country’s principal assets during the financial crisis of the mid-1990s. Theirs are the enormous blinging palaces Putin’s armoured limousine drives past every day on his way to work.
Nowhere is their prosperity more marked than in the luxury village of Barvikha, where Yeltsin and his family once lived; now the spot where dolled-up wives and mistresses buy their essential supplies from Gucci, Prada and Dolce & Gabbana (a private salon in D&G here has mink-covered doors), while their men browse in Armani, or perhaps visit the car dealership which specialises in Lamborghinis and Bentleys. The couples rendezvous at the Avenue restaurant, where a lunchtime snack of seafood risotto costs half as much as the average Russian worker spends to support his family in a week.
Personally disinterested in what he regards as the ‘high life’, Putin himself rarely eats out in public restaurants and with good reason: on one occasion when he took his wife to Rublyovka’s Prichal restaurant he found himself seated at the table next to former Vice-President Alexander Rutskoy, who seized the opportunity to try to engage Putin in small talk. So Putin ignores such places as his motorcade, ablaze with flashing blue lights, reaches speeds of up to 160 kilometres per hour on its journey eastwards into Moscow: ‘My home is just twenty or so miles outside the city and I can be in the office in less than half an hour,’ he told a visiting ambassador. But this high-speed travel is also a way of avoiding sniper attacks. Some years ago, a vehicle loaded with explosives was found in Moscow, a stone’s throw from a major street, Kutuzovskiy Prospekt, on which Putin regularly travelled. The would-be bomber was Alexander Pumané, an active member of the Kingiseppskaya criminal group, headed by Bashkiria senator, Igor Izmestiev. A total of five attempts have been made on Putin’s life to date.
The speed of Putin's convoy along the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway poses no danger to the public, since the highway and all surrounding streets are cleared of traffic – and every junction blocked – to ensure an unhindered journey. Any vehicle which does manage to evade the roadblocks risks being rammed by one of the escorting police cars – just such an incident occurred in 2006, killing the hapless driver of a Volvo who had inadvertently pulled out of a parking space.
When the motorcade turns left into Kutuzovskiy Prospekt on Putin's journey into town, the prime minister can recall illustrious passages in his country’s history, looking out at the monument commemorating Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, and the Triumphal Arch built to celebrate victory over Napoleon in 1812. Then his journey takes him, by sharp contrast, along the Novy Arbat, a garish street lined with sushi bars, a lively market and ugly high-rise office blocks.
Heading for Red Square – he still uses his suite of offices in the Kremlin’s Old Senate building – Putin can reflect comfortably on his leadership, which started on the first day of the 21st century; perhaps recalling how, just a few years ago, jobless and fast running out of money to feed his family, he contemplated the prospect of becoming one of St Petersburg’s army of unlicensed taxi drivers, trawling the streets in the very same Volga saloon in which he and an American president toured the majestic country estate he now calls home.
Indeed, Novo-Ogaryovo is on a similar scale to Sandringham – and just like the British Royal Family’s sprawling country retreat, it too boasts stables, vegetable gardens, a helipad, as well as its own recently restored church. Just like Queen Elizabeth, Putin shuns the must-have gadgets that modern technology has thrown up. He doesn’t use a Blackberry, contribute to a personal blog or send emails. Indeed he even has staff place most of his telephone calls, admitting, ‘They do it very well. It makes me envious of them’.
It is fitting that the incredible story of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a boy who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in the USSR to become one of the most powerful men on the planet, should begin with a visit to meet Her Majesty, one of the closest living relatives of Russia’s last tsar . . .