Is this Putin's $1 billion palace?

DW news report on Navalny with new drone footage: https://youtu.be/n8J2dW-QYQY

Propaganda. He doesn't own that palace. It belongs to a Russian wealthy businessman.

Shoddy workmanship! A billion doesn't buy a quality home anymore.

'Putin's palace': Builders' story of luxury, mould and fake walls https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56007943

The Navalny investigation video has racked up more than 110m views since its release. The Kremlin vehemently denies the palace claims, and President Putin has labelled it "boring" and a "compilation and montage". Since then Navalny has been jailed for failing to report to the prison service while he was recovering from a nerve agent attack in a Berlin hospital.

But at the end of last month billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, President Putin's former judo partner, said he owned the mansion, adding that it would be finished "in a couple of years" and was set to become an apartment hotel.

Chances are that it is his, but of course he won't own it directly, because he is probably bound by law to declare ownership. I also live in a country of rampant corruption and super rich karate partners, belote partners and what not.

All this is hard to prove of course. But just because some other guy owns it doesn't mean a thing. On the contrary - it is suspicious that this is a person very close to Putin.

Other very close person to Putin is the cellist Sergei Roldugin. You may never head of him, but he is a billionaire... somehow.

It is hard to crackdown on corruption in Russia, because it is a state business, with banks and all institutions involved in money laundering. Although these money flows could be tracked back to Russia, tracking them directly to Putin and his buddies is hard.

It is not a state in the western sense of the word. It is a bit different. Tsardom, maybe?