Vladimir Putin gives rare glimpse inside his gilded Kremlin apartment
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Vladimir Putin has finally given us a tour around his Kremlin crib after only being seen by his inner circle.
The Russian president has taken Russian journalist Zarubin around for a glimpse in his plush apartment, revealing what is inside.
Speaking to the camera, Putin invites his new guest in before gilded walls, large gold-framed mirrors, gold chandeliers and exotic-looking plants come into view.
He said: 'Yes, this is the apartment. As you can see it's not far away [from the Kremlin].'
A portrait of Russian Emperor Alexander III is also placed prominently on a table.
A white grand piano is sat by the window, which the Kremlin leader sadly admitted he rarely gets time to play.
The apartment also includes a wood-lined library, two bedrooms, and even a small 'home church'.
Formal negotiations with China's Xi Jinping took place in the apartment.
Putin said after the talks in March 2023: 'We had a working lunch, and then I invited the chairman, as a friend, to move to another room.
'I have an apartment here [in the Kremlin], where I have been spending a lot of time lately, I work here and spend the night very often, so we moved there and, sitting by the fireplace and drinking tea, talked about everything slowly.'
So far only small extracts of the interview has been released, with the longer version due to be released on Sunday.
It comes as millions of Russians are suffering, with British Intelligence claiming the country has suffered the largest loss of troops in Ukraine since World War Two, standing at around 250,000.
Despite this, Putin has undertaken a number of architectural projects inside his many homes.
Last year leaked footage revealed he revamped his clifftop palace worth £1 billion, getting rid of his pole-dancing boudoir and replacing it with a church with a throne.
He also got rid of the gold ornaments and decorations, and instead furnished the place with religious icons and images. More Trending
One depicts canonised Prince Vladimir the Great, who more than one thousand years ago was credited with uniting Ukraine and Russia.
Paintings of historical war scenes have appeared showing a heroic Russia.
One includes part of a prominent Kremlin painting called 'Whoever comes to us with a sword will die by the sword!'
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
MORE: Everything we know about the US and Ukraine minerals deal
MORE: Minerals for peace? Trump strong-arms Ukraine into controversial deal
MORE: 'Ukrainian spy' tried wiping out Putin's pilots by poisoning cake and Irish whiskey
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
4 hours ago
- Spectator
Who started the Cold War?
Over a few short months after the defeat of Nazism in May 1945, the 'valiant Russians' who had fought alongside Britain and America had 'transformed from gallant allies into barbarians at the gates of western civilisation'. So begins Vladislav Zubok's thorough and timely study of the history of the Cold War – or, as he nearly entitled the book, the first Cold War. For the themes that underpinned and drove that decades-long global conflict – fear, honour and interest, in Thucydides's formulation – are now very contemporary questions. 'The world has become perilous again,' writes Zubok, a Soviet-born historian who has spent three decades in the West: Diplomacy ceases to work; treaties are broken. International institutions, courts and norms cannot prevent conflicts. Technology and internet communication do not automatically promote reason and compromise, but often breed hatred, nationalism and violence. Historians tend to be wary of drawing direct parallels between the present and the past, and Zubok is too wise to arrive at any glib conclusions. The bulk of this concise, pacy book is a narrative history of the postwar world and the great superpower rivalry that defined it. Yet, as we face a new period of strategic realignments, it's inevitably to the dynamics of the Cold War we must look for a mirror of our times. There are many surprises – one being that Joseph Stalin and his entourage had been expecting their wartime alliance with London and Washington to be followed by a period of cooperation. 'It is necessary to stay within certain limits,' recalled the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. '[If you swallow too much] you could choke… We knew our limits.' Stalin, unlike his rival Trotsky, had never been a believer in world revolution and indeed shut down the Communist International during the war. Zubok argues that the Cold War was caused by 'the American decision to build and maintain a global liberal order, not by the Soviet Union's plans to spread communism in Europe'. Yet nearly four years of nuclear imbalance between Hiroshima and the first Soviet A-bomb test fuelled Stalin's paranoia. And a bloody hot war in Korea could very easily have escalated into a third world war had Douglas MacArthur been given his way and dropped nukes on Pyongyang. Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, revived international communism as a fifth column weapon against the capitalist world as the Cold War got into full swing. The great power rivalry became the wellspring for every post-colonial conflict, from Cuba to Angola, Mozambique, El Salvador and the rest. Zubok argues that the Cold War was caused by 'the American decision to build a global liberal order' But what is surprising is that, despite propagandists' eschatological framing of the conflict as a fight to the death between rival worlds, there were always pragmatists at the pinnacles of power in both Moscow and Washington. Khrushchev and Richard Nixon, vice president at the time, had heated but cordial man-to-man debates in an American show kitchen at Sokolniki Park in Moscow. Even the arch-apparatchik Leonid Brezhnev became 'a sponsor and a crucial convert from hard line to détente' early in his career, writes Zubok. And the great Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan was a surprising champion of jaw-jaw over war-war. Some of Zubok's assertions are puzzling. Rather than the USSR simply 'running out of steam', its collapse was 'triggered by Gorbachev's misguided economic reforms, political liberalisation and loss of control over the Soviet state and finances'. But that formulation suggests that it was Gorbachev's choices that crashed the ship of state – and raises the possibility that had he not embarked on his reform programme the fate of the USSR might have been different. But Yegor Gaidar, Yeltsin's economic reformer-in-chief, demonstrated in his classic 2007 study Collapse of an Empire that the implosion followed the iron laws of capitalism. The leaky bucket of the Soviet economy had been kept artificially full by high post-1973 oil prices but began to drain fatally after the Saudis collapsed prices a decade later. The USSR could not feed itself without buying US and Canadian grain for petrodollars. Gorbachev or no Gorbachev, the economy was doomed once the oil money dried up. Where Zubok gives Gorbachev credit is in the relative bloodlessness of the loss of the Soviet empire, a world-historical achievement that has long been ignored by modern Russians. Today, Gorbachev is reviled by his countrymen as a traitor and a fool who allowed himself to be taken in by American lies. Yet it is he who is the truly vital character on which any useful comparison between the first and (possibly) second Cold Wars hinges. The first Cold War was, as the Harvard political scientist Graham Allison has argued, born of the 'Thucydides Trap', whereby war emerged from the fear that a new power could displace the dominant one. But Gorbachev envisioned a world where competition for influence and resources would be replaced by cooperation. Rivalry did not have to mean enmity. Zero sum can be replaced by win-win. Sadly, neither Vladimir Putin (who is merely cosplaying as a superpower leader) nor Xi Jinping (who actually is one) have shown anything like Gorbachev's collaborative wisdom. But we can only live in hope that The World of the Cold War is 'a record of dangerous, but ancient times', as Zubok puts it, rather than a warning for the future. Often seen as an existential battle between capitalist democracy and totalitarian communism, the Cold War has long been misunderstood. Drawing on years of research, and informed by three decades in the USSR followed by three decades in the West, Zubok paints a striking new portrait of a world on the brink.
Spectator
4 hours ago
- Spectator
I've lost control of the kitchen
Looking back, I can pinpoint my fatal blunder. It was lunch. It was like the West allowing Vladimir Putin to help himself to the Crimean peninsula without a peep, basically. This is how it happened. My husband had invited two families to stay over the May bank holiday which bled into half term. For four days. 'Don't worry,' he said, in light tones, ahead of their arrival. 'I've told them they're bringing all the food and doing all the cooking.' As if I'd welcome this wonderful idea, when in fact what he'd suggested was the domestic equivalent of handing over the nuclear football and the codes behind my back. The guests are delightful and I couldn't wait to have them all (five adults and five children), but guests handling the catering was never going to happen under my roof, as my husband ought to have known. One, I am a fast and capable cook. I came second to Ed Balls in the final of the BBC's Celebrity Best Home Cook series (and maintain that he won because he made a pirate cake with full sails out of chocolate and he blubbed). Two, if an Englishman's home is his castle, the female equivalent of the White House Situation Room is a woman's kitchen. The last thing I needed, in other words, was several other bossy middle-class parents occupying my catering HQ on Exmoor. Plus, I'd already ordered a van-busting home delivery from Sainsbury's. On the Art of War principle that 'supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemies' resistance without fighting', I replied: 'Oh no, don't worry! But maybe they can do lunches?' Category error on my part. Perhaps I'm late to the party here but, as it turned out, the families didn't really have a concept of 'lunch' as a separate meal, after breakfast and before supper. They simply prepared and ate fare whenever they or their children were hungry, which was, of course, all the time. In more civilised places than the Johnson compound, i.e. Provence or Tuscany, when you have 12 people for four days it's understood that one of the 'main' meals will be 'out', i.e. at a restaurant to spare mine hosts, and the convention is that the guests stump for this. But the farm is two miles from Tarmac. It's an hour round trip for a pint of milk. A two-hour round trip to a pub. All meals are eaten in and none are 'opt'. The last thing I needed was several other bossy middle-class parents occupying my catering HQ on Exmoor On day one, everyone arrived at teatime after extended drives on the M4 and M5. We had tea and cake, and a late-ish supper. So far, so good. Two meals down! Day two was different. When provisioning, I'd texted my husband's nephew to ask what his three heavenly girls ate for breakfast. 'Bacon eggs toast juice fruit yoghurts porridge etc,' came the detailed reply. I therefore rose at 8 a.m. to slam the first tray of bacon in, yet there were people refilling the coffee jug and boiling eggs and stirring porridge at elevenses. Still, the guests did a fine clear-up and cleared off with the kids to a local beauty spot while I made scones for tea. Everyone returned from Tarr Steps at 1 p.m., making noises about their lunch duty, and invaded the kitchen. For hours. With what I felt was superhuman restraint – I can make an apple crumble in five minutes flat, and on Best Home Cook I made crab ravioli on a bed of fennel with a citrus jus from scratch starting with flour and water for the homemade pasta in 35 minutes – I only said 'But how long does it actually take to boil rice?' loudly around three times. At 3 p.m. (!) there was a simple lunch of delicious dahl (brought from London in Tupperware) and the rice on the table. As I shovelled it in, I worked out that at this rate, there would be half an hour until tea; tea would run straight into children's supper; and then adult supper. I had an awful vision of us all mealing non-stop till bedtime. I therefore put my fork and foot down and made an announcement. First, there would be a 'breakfast window' of an hour. As it was already past 3.30, I went on, we would have the scones for pudding. This went down well. So I went to the kitchen to fetch the scones. It was then that I discovered a full tray of chicken pieces in the Aga bubbling in their juices. Genuinely panicked, I returned laden with the scones, Rodda's and jams. 'And what meal is all the chicken in the Aga for?' I queried, brokenly. The table fell silent. 'Oh I put them in, just in case the children were hungry… later,' one perfect guest replied as a dozen arms shot out to grab the scones as if they'd been deliberately starved by colonial aggressors for months. I sank to my chair and applied golden, crusted Rodda's thickly to my scone. It was clear there'd still be a whole other meal 'later', i.e. between now and children's supper and, after that, two more days of culinary occupation. On day three the dishwasher flooded. On day four, the Aga went out as if in protest and could not be relit. Looking back, yes – it was lunch. Lose lunch, and you'll be out-generalled in your own kitchen by a chicken traybake.
Metro
4 hours ago
- Metro
All the celebrities slamming Trump's immigration raids
Hollywood stars are coming out in force against Donald Trump after the U.S. President ordered the deportation of illegal immigrants. Last week mass protests broke out in Los Angeles after ICE units – Immigration and Customs Enforcement – descended on Hispanic neighbourhoods and began arresting people. Soon after protestors hit the streets, Trump sent in National Guard soldiers and Marines to support immigration raids in the city, which is now in lockdown. On Tuesday afternoon, Trump defiantly declared: Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness. 'What you're witnessing is a full-blown assault on peace and public order. We will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean and safe again.' Meanwhile moments earlier California Governor Gavin Newsom filed an emergency motion in federal court to block Trump from using National Guard soldiers and Marines to support immigration raids in the city, which have been slammed by a string of famous faces. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Eva Longoria has said she 'kept crying' before composing a message to her fans. 'I don't want it to be about me and my emotions about it, but it is so humane, hard to watch, and hard to witness from afar,' she said. 'I can't believe it's happening all over the country. It's un-American. 'We all can agree nobody wants criminals in our country, nobody wants rapists, nobody wants drug dealers, nobody wants bad actors in our country – that's not what's happening.' She continued: 'These roundups are happening in birthday parties, in elementary graduations, Home Depots – those are not criminals. I just hope that everybody has more compassion to this issue and realise we had industries dependant on immigrant labour. These are people who feed us and take care of us and our children, and our communities and we can't deny them as humans,' she said. 'These are hardworking people and they want to come here and work and provide for their families.' Saying she would 'continue to post and speak out', Eva went on to list of organisations that offered legal services to immigrants. During the BET Awards in Los Angeles earlier this week, rapper Doechii used her acceptance speak to address 'what's happening right now outside of the building'. 'There are ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities in the name of law and order. 'Trump is using military forces to stop a protest, and I want y'all to consider what kind of government it appears to be when every time we exercise our democratic right to protest, the military is deployed against us. What type of government is that?. After being applauded by the audience, she went on: 'People are being swept up and torn from their families. I feel like it's my responsibility as an artist to use this moment to speak up for all oppressed people…we all deserve to live in hope and not fear. I hope we stand together. Attending the protest in Los Angeles, Billie Eilish's brother Finneas said a few days ago that he was tear-gassed by the National Guard. After going to a protest at the weekend, the singer-songwriter posted on social media: 'Tear gassed almost immediately at the very peaceful protest downtown – they're inciting this,' he wrote. Since then, he's shared a series of posts about the raids and supporting the protests. Kim Kardashian, who has previously expressed support for Trump, surprised many when posting a statement about what is unfolding in her home city. Posting a statement on Instagram, she wrote: 'When we're told that ICE exists to keep our country safe and remove violent criminals – great. But when we witness innocent, hardworking people being ripped from their families in inhumane ways, we have to speak up. We have to do what's right,' she wrote on Instagram. 'Growing up in LA, I've seen how deeply immigrants are woven into the fabric of this city. They are our neighbors, friends, classmates, coworkers, and family. 'No matter where you fall politically, it's clear that our communities thrive because of the contributions of immigrants. We can't turn a blind eye when fear and injustice keep people from living their lives freely and safely. There HAS to be a BETTER way.' During the latest episode of his late-night talk show, presenter Jimmy Kimmel blasted the U.S. President. 'I'm very angry. I cannot believe what's going on. I knew it was going to be bad. I did not know it was going to be this bad. People who have lived here their whole lives, people who have been in this city longer than I have, the vast majority of whom have never done anything wrong are being abducted – which is the correct word to use – by agents in masks hiding their identities. Grabbing people off the street and at work and sending people to detention centers.' 'And to protest that, which is not only our right as Americans, it's our responsibility, Los Angelenos have been gathering to demonstrate – with very few exceptions, peacefully demonstrate – to voice their opposition to this disgusting and unnecessary abuse of power instigated by our president.' Kimmel went on to add that Trump was 'dead-set on exacerbating this'. 'He actually wants conflict. He is intentionally inflaming and lying to make it seem like there's a war going on here. He is purposefully pitting Americans against each other.' Actor Mark Ruffalo posted a lengthy statement on Instagram, writing: 'When you have working class people going after the poor and other working class people you know you are living in an oligarchy.' 'You want to get rid of the people picking who are picking your food, without a care in the world for who is poisoning your bodies with chemicals that aren't ever meant to be in nature,' Mark said in the beginning of his post. 'You want to drive out those who make your life easier but not question those who dull your minds with lines and disinformation meant to confuse you and destroy brotherly and sisterly love for us here? You're pointing your guns in the wrong direction,' he continued. Mark went on to take aim at Trump, adding: The billionaire up top is stealin you blind and you are worried about the poorest of the poor ruining your life? You are pointing your guns at the wrong direction.' Actress and singer Renee Rapp didn't mince her words, posting online: 'F*** ICE, f*** this administration, f*** all of y'all who are complicit in ensuring that this happened this is a f***ing disgrace.' Demi Lovato also weighed in on the ongoing protests, sharing: 'What's happening in Los Angeles and across the country is heartbreaking. Immigrants are a vital part of our community and the fabric of our country. While I feel powerless, I stand with those living in fear and hope these resources can help in some way. Let's please continue to show up for one another and support our neighbours.' Director Ava DuVernay, best known for films including Selma and Origin, wrote on Instagram: 'I'm witnessing tear gas and non-lethal rounds being unleashed on peaceful protesters in DTLA. More Trending 'People of all ages and stripes from all over the city, raising their voices. And being treated worse than January 6 terrorists.' It comes after she advised people in May to resists a 'criminal' U.S. President at a time when 'truth itself is under revision.' Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Dakota Johnson had bizarre asparagus murder dream about Glastonbury headliner MORE: Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae) rapper Silentó sentenced to 30 years for killing cousin MORE: Sabrina Carpenter sparks huge backlash over 'disturbing' new album cover
