As part of a dramatic battle with the Russian president playing out before an online audience of millions, the opposition leader and his team detailed a lavish compound costing more than $1 billion.
A team led by the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny published a sprawling investigation on Tuesday describing a secret palace built for President Vladimir V. Putin on the Black Sea, with the report’s release coming less than 24 hours after Mr. Navalny had been ordered jailed. The report was the latest swipe in Mr. Navalny’s dramatic battle with Mr. Putin that is playing out before an online audience of millions, and it arrived as the opposition leader’s supporters seek to energize street protests planned for this weekend. The investigation — complete with floor plans, financial details and interior photographs of a compound Mr. Navalny says cost more than $1 billion — appeared to offer the most comprehensive accounting yet of a huge residence the president is said to have built for himself on southern Russia’s verdant seashore. The Kremlin denied the findings in the report, which went online Tuesday as a 113-minute YouTube video and a lengthy, illustrated text version that also invited users to post pictures of Mr. Putin’s purported luxury to Facebook and Instagram. The video has been viewed more than four million times on YouTube. “They will keep on stealing more and more, until they bankrupt the entire country,” Mr. Navalny says in the video, referring to Mr. Putin and his circle. “Russia sells huge amounts of oil, gas, metals, fertilizer and timber — but people’s incomes keep falling and falling, because Putin has his palace.” Mr. Navalny — who flew home Sunday after being treated in Germany for a near-fatal poisoning in Siberia in August — was arrested at passport control in full view of Russians watching live broadcasts of his arrival.
