In a report broadcast on October 11, 2020, a Russian state television journalist excitedly announces to viewers what awaits them: excerpts from his interview with President Vladimir Putin and news about the testing of a hypersonic missile that Moscow boasts about, among other things.
"After the interview, more work," the reporter says, repeating the Kremlin's narrative that Putin is constantly working to keep the country safe and strong. The label in the corner of the screen reads "Novo-Ogaryovo," the main presidential residence in the Moscow suburbs, and the footage shows Putin walking towards the door of his office and reaching for the handle.
And that's where the truth is revealed: the position of the door handle and a few other details reveal that the footage was not recorded in Novo-Ogarevo, an investigation by Radio Free Europe (RFE) has determined.
In reality, the footage was taken more than 1.500 kilometers south, in an almost identical office in Bocharov Ruchey, the state residence in Sochi, on the Black Sea coast.
"Systema", the Russian investigative unit of Radio Free Europe (RFE), has revealed that there are not just one, but two copies of Putin's office in Novo-Ogaryovo, one in Sochi and the other in Valdai, roughly halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, and that the Kremlin has been dishonest about the president's location for years.
In most of the cases identified by Systema, meetings claimed to have taken place in Novo-Ogaryovo were actually filmed in Sochi or Valdai, a lakeside town whose forested location Putin has favored since launching a 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 routinely misled the public about Putin's whereabouts for at least the past few years. It also raises questions about the exact timing of meetings and conversations that the Putin administration has been publicizing.
In an investigative report published in August, Systema revealed that at least five Kremlin meetings, which were claimed to have taken place in April or May, were actually recorded months earlier. Putin continued this deception this fall: since August, the Kremlin has released at least seven old recordings of the president's meetings, presenting them as new, RFE/RL's Russian unit has discovered.
Behind door number 1...
Among other things, Systema came to its findings about the three nearly identical offices by carefully reviewing around 700 videos released by Putin's administration or shown on state television, as well as by analyzing images posted on the Kremlin's official website.
The journalists also examined in detail a large amount of material, including social media posts and leaked travel logs describing the plans and actual trips of people in Putin's entourage, such as security personnel and state television journalists who follow him.
The October 2020 report is a simple but striking example.
In the office in Novo-Ogaryovo, the door handle next to Putin's desk is placed slightly lower than the joint separating the wall panels on either side, which is clearly visible in footage and photographs of the room, including images from the company that installed the parquet.
However, although the doorknob that Putin reaches for as he leaves the office looks the same, it is placed slightly higher than the joint in the wall, a difference of only a few centimeters, but still undeniable. This means that the interview was actually filmed in Sochi, and not near Moscow.
Among other details that reveal discrepancies between the location announced by the Kremlin and the actual location of numerous meetings claimed to have taken place in Novo-Ogaryovo are: the patterns on Putin's ties, the shape of the television stand, the shade of the table surface, and the texture of the wooden document tray on the table.
Systema confirmed its findings about Putin's actual location in the videos by analyzing travel documents. For example, an August 2020 television interview that the Kremlin claimed was filmed in Novo-Ogaryovo was actually filmed in Sochi, judging by details like the door handle.
Indeed, an electronic ticket purchased through a Kremlin-linked travel agency, obtained by Systema, shows that journalist Sergei Brilyov flew from Sochi to Moscow on August 27, the day the interview was broadcast on state television.
This and other internal documents of Russian state television came into the possession of "Systema" journalists thanks to leaked emails from the VGTRK corporation, which were provided to them by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
Journeys that reveal the truth
In particular, the September 2020 footage that was claimed to have been shot in Novo-Ogaryovo, according to an email seen by "Systema", was actually the reason for a state television producer to ask a colleague to organize a trip to Sochi for well-known journalist Pavel Zarubin and several members of the TV crew.
Zarubin, one of the authors of a weekly news program on state television Rossiya-1 that focuses on Putin, often traveled to Sochi and brought back footage that the Kremlin then presented as having been shot in Novo-Ogaryovo, Systema discovered.
A leaked travel document and a short clip from one of Zarubin's shows reveal that a member of the presidential security team in charge of communications spent one night in Sochi at the time the footage with Putin, which was claimed to have been shot in Novo-Ogaryovo, was actually filmed in Bocharov Ruchey in October 2021.
In addition to the door handle, there are other details that distinguish the office in Novo-Ogaryovo from the one in Bocharov Ruchey – such as the position of the junction on the wall behind Putin's back and the legs of the TV stand.
The use of the Bocharov Ruch by Kremlin leaders dates back to the time of Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet leader from 1953 to 1964, and his successor Leonid Brezhnev. The building where the meetings were held, built in the 1950s, was later demolished and replaced with a new building built ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
Footage taken shortly after the games' opening ceremony shows a reception attended by Russian cultural figures, as well as Vladimir Putin and Alina Kabaeva, the 2004 Olympic rhythmic gymnastics champion who is widely reported to be his long-time partner and the mother of at least two of his children.
Over the years, Putin has hosted many other leaders and Russian officials at Bocharov Ruchey. During the COVID-19 pandemic, throughout much of 2020 and 2021, approximately a third of meetings claimed to have taken place in Novo-Ogaryovo actually took place at Bocharov Ruchey, according to evidence gathered by Systema.
Putin also spent a lot of time in Valdai, where he held meetings in an office that looks almost identical to the one near Moscow and the one in Sochi.
Insulation and safety
In recent years, Putin has increasingly preferred Valdai. Since February 2023, a year after launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has largely withdrawn from Bocharov Ruchey.
Furthermore, Kremlin recordings and other materials analyzed by "Systema" suggest that almost all of Putin's meetings claimed to have been recorded in Novo-Ogaryovo during 2025 were actually held in Valdai.
Valdai is also home to the state residence, and a pavilion for meetings and conferences was built in 2016 on the site of a former tennis court in a wooded part of the complex. The construction was carried out by the same company that carried out the renovations in Novo-Ogarevo and Bocharovo Ruchej.
As in the case of Bocharov's office, the position of the junction on the wall behind Putin's chair is one of the signs that this is not Novo-Ogaryov. Another detail that distinguishes Valdai from the other two offices is the thermostat switch placed exactly in the middle of the wall panel. On Putin's desk, the pattern on the wooden document tray also has a different pattern.
Based on visual details, travel times and other evidence, Systema determined that one of the many meetings held in Valdai was a government meeting three days after a fire at a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo in March 2018 that killed at least 60 people, most of them children – a week after Putin secured his fourth presidential term. The Kremlin has claimed that the meeting took place in Novo-Ogaryovo.
As Russia massed troops along the border with Ukraine ahead of a full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, Putin spoke via video link with then-US President Joe Biden on December 7, 2021, who warned him of the consequences of the attack, while Putin criticized Kiev and NATO. The conversation took place from Sochi.
After that, Putin traveled to Valdai, where he held several meetings, according to the findings of the Russian unit of RFE/RL, while the Kremlin claimed that he was located and working from Novo-Ogaryovo.
From February 24 to April 12, as Russian forces initially advanced on multiple fronts but were then pushed back from the outskirts of Kiev, failing to subdue Ukraine and thus paving the way for a protracted war that continues with no clear end, Putin held at least 12 meetings in or from his Valdai office.
Analysis of the footage and other evidence also shows that 29 of Putin's 30 appearances in that office between January and the end of September this year were actually filmed in Valdai - where, at some point in recent years, the thermostat switch was moved to the same place as in the offices in Novo-Ogaryovo and Sochi.
Konstantin Gaze, a sociologist who studies Russian authoritarianism and bureaucracy, says that, in the midst of the war against Ukraine – in which Russian energy and military facilities are increasingly targeted by drone and missile attacks – there is a simple reason why Putin prefers Valdai.
"It's a safety issue, of course," Gaaze said.
Bocharov Ruchey, he said, is relatively exposed because it is located on a hill in Sochi, while prominent defense measures would attract attention in the elite Moscow suburb of Novo-Ogaryovo. The Valdai residence is much more secluded, and the Russian edition of Radio Free Europe (RFE) reported in August that 12 anti-aircraft systems, mostly Pantsir-S1 missile systems, were deployed in its vicinity.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov read the questions sent to him by Systema before the publication of this article, but did not respond. The VGTRK press service also did not comment on the journalists' inquiries.
Back in 2020, after Russian media outlet Proekt first reported that Putin had two nearly identical offices – in Novo-Ogaryovo and Bocharovo Ruchey – Peskov said the report was incorrect and that there were no "identical offices."
President Putin's administration has never addressed evidence that it misled the Russian public about the locations of hundreds of meetings.
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