Navalny’s Team Released Two-Hour Video Featuring Putin’s Deluxe Palace in Crimea

Alexei Navalny's team on Tuesday released a two-hour video featuring details of a luxurious property on Russia's southern Black Sea coast purportedly belonging to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The YouTube feature, accompanied by a blog post from the jailed dissident, claims Putin's property cost $1.35 billion (€1.1 billion) and was paid for "with the largest bribe in history."

The video, released less than two days after Navalny was arrested at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport and subsequently jailed. It alleges that the private estate is 39 times the size of Monaco. Among the facilities it is said to boast were a casino within a sprawling mansion, an ice rink and vineyards.

Described as the "most expensive palace in the world," the palace complex spans some 7,800 hectares (about 19,300 acres), and also includes a church, an amphitheater, a teahouse and a helipad. The palace was allegedly funded through an elaborate corruption scheme involving Putin's inner circle in return for a favor.

"It is the most secretive and well-guarded facility in Russia, without exaggeration," Navalny says in the video. "This isn't a country house, it's not a cottage, it's not a residence — it's an entire city, or rather a kingdom. It has impregnable fences, its own port, its own security, a church, its own permit system, a no-fly zone, and even its own border checkpoint. Its like a separate state inside of Russia. And in this state there is a single and irreplaceable czar. Putin."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the allegations were old but that the property, near the resort town of Gelendzhik, did not belong to Putin. The allegations were first made in 2010 by Sergei Kolesnikov, a businessman with connections to Putin before his time in...