The Daily Populous Thursday November 13rd, 2025 morning edition
Authored by rferl.org and submitted by RFERL_ReadsReddit

In a report aired on October 11, 2020, a Russian state TV journalist breathlessly tells viewers what's in store: excerpts from his interview with President Vladimir Putin and news about the test of a hypersonic missile Moscow has been boasting about, among other things.

"After the interview, more work," the reporter says, repeating the Kremlin narrative that Putin labors nonstop to keep the country safe and strong. A tag in a corner of the screen says "Novo-Ogaryovo" -- the main presidential residence in the Moscow suburbs -- and the footage shows Putin heading for his office door and reaching for the handle.

And that's the giveaway: The placement of the door handle and a few other details reveal the footage was not filmed at Novo-Ogaryovo at all, an RFE/RL investigation has determined.

In fact, it was shot more than 1,500 kilometers to the south in an almost identical office at Bocharov Ruchei, a state residence in Sochi, on the Black Sea coast.

Systema, RFE/RL's Russian investigative unit, found there are not just one but two copies of Putin's office at Novo-Ogaryovo -- one in Sochi and the other at Valdai, roughly halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg -- and that the Kremlin has been dishonest about the president's location hundreds of times in recent years.

In most cases established by Systema, meetings that ostensibly took place at Novo-Ogaryovo were actually filmed in Sochi or at Valdai, a lakeside town whose forested location Putin has favored since he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has led to Ukrainian drone attacks on military and industrial targets in Russia.

The investigation points to a highly secretive Kremlin that has misled the public about Putin's location on a regular basis for several years at least. It also adds to questions about the timing of the meetings and talks Putin's administration publicizes.

In an investigative report published in August, Systema revealed that at least five Kremlin meetings that ostensibly took place in April or May were actually filmed months earlier. Putin has continued that ruse this autumn: Since August, the Kremlin has released at least seven old videos of the president's meetings, passing them off as new, Systema found.

Among other methods, Systema made its findings about the three nearly identical offices by closely watching some 700 videos published by Putin's administration or shown on state TV and examining images posted on the Kremlin website.

Journalists also combed thorough reams of material including social media posts and leaked travel records describing plans and actual trips by people on the edges of Putin's entourage, such as security personnel and the state TV journalists who cover him.

The October 2020 report is a simple but stunning example.

In the Novo-Ogaryovo office, the handle on the door near Putin's desk is set slightly lower than a seam that separates wall panels on either side -- a fact that is clear from footage and photos of the room, including images from the company that laid the parquet floor.

But while the handle Putin reaches for as he leaves the office looks the same, it is set slightly higher than the wall seam -- a difference of a few centimeters, but nonetheless unmistakable. And what it means is that the interview was filmed in Sochi, not outside Moscow.

Among other details that reveal discrepancies between the location announced by the Kremlin and the actual location of numerous meetings purportedly held at Novo-Ogaryovo: the patterns on Putin's neckties, the shape of a TV stand, the hue of a tabletop, and the grain of a wooden document tray on the desk.

Systema corroborated findings about Putin's location in video footage by examining travel documents. For example, an August 2020 TV interview that the Kremlin said took place at Novo-Ogaryovo appeared to have actually been filmed in Sochi, judging by details including the door handle.

Sure enough, an e-ticket purchased by a travel agency with ties to the Kremlin and obtained by Systema indicated that the interviewer, Sergei Brilyov, flew from Sochi to Moscow on August 27, the day the interview aired on state television.

This and other internal Russian state television documents were obtained by Systema journalists though leaked VGTRK corporate e-mails provided to the journalists by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

Separately, footage filmed in September 2020 was purportedly shot at Novo-Ogaryovo. But in an e-mail seen by Systema, a state TV producer asked a colleague to organize a trip to Sochi for prominent journalist Pavel Zarubin and several other TV crew members at that time.

Zarubin, a co-creator of a weekly news show on state-run Rossia-1 that focuses on Putin, has frequently traveled to Sochi and brought back footage that the Kremlin then represented as having been filmed at Novo-Ogaryovo, Systema found.

A leaked travel document and a short portion of one of Zarubin's shows revealed that a presidential security staffer involved in communications stayed a night in Sochi at a time when footage of Putin purportedly shot at Novo-Ogaryovo, but actually shot at Bocharov Ruchei, was filmed in October 2021.

In addition to the door handle, there are other differences between the office at Novo-Ogaryovo and the one at Bocharov Ruchei. The placement of a seam on the wall behind Putin's back is one; the legs of the TV stand are another.

The use of Bocharov Ruchei by Kremlin bosses goes back at least as far as Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader from 1953-64, and his successor, Leonid Brezhnev. A building where meetings were held, constructed in the 1950s, was eventually torn down and replaced by a building that went up ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

Footage filed shortly after the ceremony opening of the games shows a reception attended by Russian cultural figures as well as Putin and Alina Kabayeva, the 2004 Olympic rhythmic gymnastics gold medalist who is widely reported to be his longtime partner and the mother of at least two children by him.

Over the years, Putin has hosted many other leaders, and other Russian officials, at Bocharov Ruchei. During the COVID era, for much of 2020 and 2021, about one-third of the meetings that were ostensibly held at Novo-Ogaryovo actually took place at Bocharov Ruchei, evidence reviewed by Systema indicates.

He also spent a lot of time at Valdai, holding meetings in an office that looks a lot like the one outside Moscow and the one in Sochi.

More and more in recent years, Putin has favored Valdai. He has largely stayed away from Bocharov Ruchei since February 2023, one year after he launched Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Furthermore, Kremlin footage and other materials examined by Systema suggest that almost all his meetings purportedly filmed at Novo-Ogaryovo in 2025 actually took place at Valdai.

Valdai is also the site of a state residence, and a pavilion for meetings and conferences was built on what used to be a tennis court in a wooded area on its grounds in 2016 by the same company that handled the renovations at Novo-Ogaryovo and Bocharov Ruchei.

As with Bocharov Ruchei, the placement of a seam on the wall behind Putin's chair is one of the signs that this is not Novo-Ogaryovo. Another that distinguishes Valdai from both the other offices is a thermostat switch set dead-center in a wall panel. On Putin's desk, the grain of the wooden document tray has a different pattern.

Through visual details, travel times, and other evidence, Systema determined that one of the many meetings held at Valdai was a government huddle three days after a fire ripped through a mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo in March 2018, killing at least 60 people, most of them children, a week after Putin secured his fourth presidential term. The Kremlin claimed it took place at Novo-Ogaryovo.

As Russia amassed forces along Ukraine's borders ahead of the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, Putin spoke to then US President Joe Biden by video-link from Sochi on December 7, 2021, with Biden warning against an attack and Putin criticizing Kyiv and NATO.

Putin then traveled to Valdai and held several meetings from there, according to Systema's findings, while the Kremlin reported that he was working at Novo-Ogaryovo.

From February 24 to April 12, as Russian forces first advanced on several fronts but were then pushed back from the suburbs of Kyiv, failing to subjugate Ukraine and setting the stage for the long war that continues with no end in sight, Putin held at least 12 meetings at or from the Valdai office, Systema found.

An analysis of footage and other evidence also shows that all but one of 30 appearances by Putin in the office in question between January and the end of September this year were filmed at Valdai -- where, at some point in the past few years, the thermostat switch has been moved to a spot corresponding with the Novo-Ogaryovo and Sochi offices.

Konstantin Gaaze, a sociologist who studies Russian authoritarianism and bureaucracy, says that amid the war against Ukraine, which is targeting Russian energy and military facilities with increasing drone and missile attacks, there's a simple reason for Putin's preference for Valdai.

"It's a matter of security, of course," Gaaze said.

Bocharov Ruchei is relatively exposed on high ground in Sochi, and prominent defensive measures would attract attention in the tony Moscow suburb where Novo-Ogaryovo is located, he said. The Valdai residence is more secluded, and RFE/RL's Russian Service reported in August that 12 air-defense installations have been set up in the area around it, most of them Pantsir-S1 missile systems.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, read questions sent by Systema ahead of publication of this article but did not respond. The press office of VGTRK did not comment in response to the journalists' inquiries.

In 2020, after the Russian-language media outlet Proekt first reported that Putin had two very similar offices, at Novo-Ogaryovo and Bocharov Ruchei, Peskov said the report was inaccurate and that there were no "identical offices."

Putin's administration has not addressed evidence that it has misled Russians about the locations where hundreds of meetings have been held.