Vladimir Putins Paranoid Armored Train Travel

The Dossier

The stations built for Putin’s armored train are visible on satellite images used by Google Maps.

Stations built for Vladimir Putin’s train near his residences were caught on satellite imagery.

The fact that a secret network of railways and stations was built for the president was previously reported by the Project.

Train stations built for Putin’s armored train caught on satellite imagery

Stations built for Vladimir Putin’s train near his residences have been captured on satellite imagery. The fact that a secret network of railways and stations was built for the president was previously reported.

The pictures also show the station next to the heliport in the village of Dolgie Borody, the nearest settlement to the presidential residence in Valdai, a separate dead-end road leading to the Bocharov Ruchey residence in Sochi, as well as train stations in the center of Moscow and in Novo- Ogaryovo.

Context. In recent years, Vladimir Putin began to regularly move around the country on a special armored train. As the Project found out , for this, a separate railway network was built near the presidential residences. On February 13, the Sota publication published photographs of Putin’s special station in the Kalanchevskaya district in Moscow.

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The train was prepared for the president back in 2014-2015, but the head of state began to ride it constantly in the second half of 2021, when the Russian army began to prepare for an invasion of Ukraine. The company that owns the train belonged to Yuri Kovalchuk’s nephew. Kovalchuk is the main shareholder of Rossiya Bank and a close friend of the president. His structures manage Putin’s palace near Gelendzhik.

Since August-September 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been actively using a special armored train. An acquaintance of the head of state told the Dossier Center about this. According to him, the latest version of the train was equipped in 2014-2015, but Putin began to ride it regularly shortly before the transfer of Russian troops to the border with Ukraine. This information was confirmed by a source close to the presidential administration.

“The departure of the train can be spontaneous, unannounced. After the outbreak of the war, in February-March, he began to use the train very actively, especially to get to his residence in Valdai, ”the Dossier interlocutor noted.

The use of such a composition is dictated by secrecy considerations:

• the movements of the aircraft of the presidential detachment can be tracked using various services .
• There are no such services for passenger trains .
• The special train of the head of state is visually almost indistinguishable from other trains of Russian Railways – the same gray color with a red stripe.
• There are several main differences.
• First, the presidential carriages are armored.
• Secondly, the composition has the highest priority:
  • the train schedule is adjusted to Putin so that its composition can run at maximum speed and without stops.
• The special train must include:
  • a car for the president with a bedroom and a study for meetings, a car for attendants and a car for special communications.

An acquaintance of Putin recalls that the armored train was equipped in Moscow, not far from the Sokol metro station. There is really a depot “Podmoskovnaya” of the Moscow Directorate of High-Speed Communications nearby, where modern trains “Lastochka” serve.

Special Equipment

The existence of the special train is not a secret. In November 2019, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev held a meeting there, after which Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote about the composition. The description of the newspaper coincides with the story of the Dossier source:

“Only the President and the Prime Minister have the right to ride the special train.” The cars, the newspaper noted, are painted gray with the branded red symbols of the Russian Railways, the train itself is prefabricated, it is “separately formed for each trip of the first persons of the state.” There are only a few secret cars, the rest are ordinary SVs and compartments. The train is pulled by two diesel locomotives TEP70BS.

Vladimir Putin rarely uses this train in public. The last time the Kremlin press service took a picture of him in a carriage was during a meeting in 2012. It was the previous version of the armored train – a new train for the president was prepared two or three years later. A photo of the train from the outside has never been released. This is no coincidence: the train of the head of state can still be distinguished from an ordinary passenger one, since radio antennas of special communications are visible on the roofs of several cars. Antennas are covered with casings, this hides them from prying eyes and makes them streamlined. The shrouds can be seen on the train on which Putin opened the railway traffic on the Crimean Bridge in December 2019 (the president used this train only once).

The train of the company “Grand Service Express”. On the roofs of the cars there are special communication antennas, the train is pulled by three locomotives at once. Source: railgallery.ru

“Dossier” found such casings on another passenger train . It is pulled by one electric locomotive and two diesel locomotives of the same TEP70BS series, about which Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote. Outwardly, this train differs from an ordinary train not only in antennas and an unusually large number of locomotives: three axles are installed on the undercarriage bogies, and the cars themselves are six-axle. Such cars are usually used on heavier freight trains, standard passenger cars are four-axle. Reinforced axles may indicate that the train is armored. The “Dossier” has at its disposal photographs of the same train at close range. The wagons bear the emblem of the Grand Service Express company and the website of the organization. The train was also caught on video: the symbolism of the “Grand Service Express” is also visible on the composition. This firm is associated with a friend of Putin – Yuri Kovalchuk.

The emblem of the Grand Service Express company is visible on the train car.

Longtime partners
In 2005, the first private train, nicknamed the “hotel on wheels”, began running between Moscow and St. Petersburg. “The coupe is twice the size of the standard with magnetic locks, inside – mahogany, carpets, sofas and even Wi-Fi,” wrote Forbes. It was a train of the Grand Service Express company founded in 2002. The founder then was the firm Zheldorconsulting. Kommersant, citing market participants , claimed that among the co-owners was Yuri Kovalchuk’s nephew Kirill Kovalchuk, the current president of the National Media Group.

Vladimir Putin in an armored train car in 2012. Source: kremlin.ru

The latest owners of the carrier, information about which was entered in the register of legal entities, are Cypriot Sorena Investments Ltd and Piper Participation Corp from the British Virgin Islands. Sorena Investments is owned by businessman Mikhail Rabinovich. Forbes described him as a professional railway worker who lives between London and Gibraltar and occasionally visits Russia. “The phenomenon of Rabinovich is that he cooperates with the railway under any leadership,” the magazine wrote , citing an industry source. A friend of the businessman claimed that Rabinovich was well acquainted with the family of Yuri Kovalchuk.

This is not surprising, because the second co-owner of the carrier, Piper Participation, is associated with Kovalchuk. The offshore company owns the Evroresurs company, which owns the Kleinmikhel dacha, the former country mansion of Countess Maria Kleinmikhel on Kamenny Island in St. Petersburg . “Interlocutor” wrote that the building is called the “Reception House of the Presidential Administration.” The organization of cellist Sergei Roldugin, another friend of Vladimir Putin, is registered at the same address. Finally, Svetlana Kolesnikova, the general director of Evroresurs, previously headed the structure of Yury Kovalchuk’s Rossiya bank.

The current ownership structure of Grand Service Express is hidden in the register of legal entities. But from the reports of related companies, it follows that Rabinovich’s offshore Sorena Investments Ltd sold its stake, and now 80% of the carrier belongs to the Russian Railways structure. Probably the remaining 20% is owned by Piper Participation Corp. In 2019, Grand Service Express became the sole operator of rail transportation to Crimea, and in 2020 it came under US sanctions.

Yuri Kovalchuk is one of the president’s closest friends. They met in the early 1990s, when Putin worked at the St. Petersburg mayor’s office. Soon they became co-founders of the dacha cooperative “Lake”. Kovalchuk and his business partners control Bank Rossiya, the SOGAZ insurance group, and the National Media Group (Alina Kabaeva, the mother of two of Vladimir Putin’s children, is chairman of the company’s board of directors, according to The Wall Street Journal ) . But most importantly, Kovalchuk’s structures manage the unofficial residences of Vladimir Putin, serve several yachts of the president and his entourage, and own an airline. Thus, the Kompleks and Binom companies associated with Kovalchuk own Putin’s palace near Gelendzhik.

Putin’s acquaintance could not say with certainty whether the Grand Service Express train was really the president’s special train, but he drew attention to the casings of the special communications antennas on the roof and to an unusual car in the center of the train, which is missing some of the windows. The “dossier” showed photos of the train to an interlocutor close to Vladimir Putin’s entourage. The source said that outwardly the train is similar to the train used by the head of state.

Putin built a secret network of railways and stations – they lead to his residences

Railway lines were brought to all the main residences of Vladimir Putin, and secret stations were built nearby, the Project found out . This confirms the message of the Dossier Center that the head of state has recently begun to use the train more often than the plane.

Where were stations and railway lines built?

Putin’s residence in Valdai . In the autumn of 2022, a Project correspondent discovered a guarded railway station with a heliport near the village of Dolgie Borody in the Valdai National Park, the closest settlement to Putin’s beloved Valdai residence. Three local residents told the Project that the station and a special railway line to it were built only for the head of state, and the guard drove the correspondent away when he tried to approach the fence of the guarded station.

“Earlier, the railway near Valdai was in a terrible state, it was possible to travel no more than 15-25 km / h on it. When they began to prepare the railway for the residence in Valdai, they repaired part of the existing tracks along which Putin’s train was supposed to pass, and they didn’t repair those sections where he didn’t need to, ”the former engineer who worked on the route told the Project between Moscow and St. Petersburg and more than once, according to him, who saw the President’s special train. According to satellite imagery, the station and railway for Putin in Valdai were built in 2019.

Novo-Ogaryovo. According to satellite images, the station in Novo-Ogaryovo appeared in 2015 – it is located 400 meters from Putin’s residence in the Moscow region. The land under the station was seized from private ownership in favor of the FSO by the decision of the then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The special station itself is designed for a small number of wagons and is hidden behind a high fence, on which surveillance cameras are installed every 10 meters.

Sochi. To stop the train at the Sochi residence “Bocharov Ruchey” in the region of 2017, a platform and a new dead-end railway line appeared, hidden from the tracks on which the electric trains run, with a high fence.

The President’s special train has repeatedly hit the lens of trainspotters and railway workers. For example, in November 2018 or April 2020. According to a former engineer interviewed by Proekt, Putin’s armored train is based in a depot at the Moskva-Kalanchevskaya station, where there is a closed station for VIPs. This special station, as the correspondent of the “Project” was convinced, is still functioning – the high fence surrounding it is additionally reinforced with barbed wire. In 2017, a new road for motorcades was laid directly to the platform of the VIP station on Kalanchevka. The President’s special train belongs to the Grand Service Express company, which was associated with Putin’s close friend Yuri Kovalchuk.

The Project learned about Putin’s railway and stations while preparing the final season of our Iron Masks series. Read the details soon.

Ilya Rozhdestvensky

Dossier Center