New pictures have revealed the inside of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s luxury armoured train.
The images, released by Dossier Center, a website which tracks the activity of those linked to the Kremlin, depict a personal beauty salon, medical suite and even a gym complete with state-of-the-art equipment including a hyperextension machine and a step platform.
The hammam features a “fancy shower” including an “aroma foam” mode with a price tag of £3.75 million, with the train also featuring anti-ageing machines, a lung ventilator, a defibrillator and a patient monitor designed to assess pulse, temperature and other parameters.
Putin’s armoured train features a state-of-the-art gym— (Dossier Center)
The medical suite includes a lung ventilator, defibrillator and a patient monitor— (Dossier Center)
Elsewhere, an opulent dining car is furnished with plush red carpet, curtains and a long, art deco-style table. The Dossier Center reports that the armoured train has cost 1.45 billion rubles in maintenance since 2014 (£12,448,010.75).
Amidst Russia’s war in Ukraine, Mr Putin appears to be using the train more. The Dossier Center previously quoted an unnamed source close to the presidential administration who said Mr Putin has used the train increasingly since 2021 as it cannot be tracked in the same way as planes.
The “fancy shower” includes an “aroma foam” mode— (Dossier Center)
The dining car can be seen furnished with plush red carpet, curtains and a long, art deco-style table— (Dossier Center)
Russian media outlet Proekt reported in February 2023 that secret stations and connecting lines had been built in locations often frequented by Mr Putin, including Novo Ogaryovo outside Moscow in 2015, Sochi in 2017 and Valdai in 2019.
Ilya Rozhdestvensky, a journalist who works for the Dossier Center, previously expressed that there was a “psychological reason” behind Mr Putin’s use of the train.
“The psychological reason of using this train is that he’s scared”, Mr Rozhdestvensky told CNN in February 2023.
“He’s scared that he can be tracked, that his plane can be tracked, that his plane can be shot down.”
Meanwhile, trainspotter Mikhail Korotkov was previously forced to flee Russia after the photographs he took of Putin’s armoured train – a few of which he posted online - attracted the attention of the state.
In May 2021, Mr Korotkov noticed that word-for-word transcripts of his private phone conversations had appeared on his YouTube page, which he took as a warning to stop.
“When I saw those conversations in my comments, that was creepy”, he told The Independent. “I thought about my personal safety, and from that moment I realised that everything I had published on the internet could be used against me.”
