An abandoned yacht and Putin's new social contract
A #YachtWatch update and more!
Welcome to this week’s Rant! Just a quick reminder about the Foreign Influence Operations course: CLASS 4: INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION OPERATIONS will be posted Monday. If you haven’t signed up already, you should! All the cool kids are doing it.
ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
This week brought some good #YachtWatch news: Alfa Nero, a 267-foot long yacht worth somewhere between $81 million and $120 million (depending on who you ask), is going to be auctioned off by the government of Antigua and Barbuda.
This is good news because 1) my birthday is coming up and 2) this substack is booming so I’ll be bidding on the yacht in order to enjoy its hydraulically-operated pool (a few more paid subscriptions and I can buy a helicopter to put the yacht’s helipad to use, as well).
Alfa Nero reportedly belongs to Russian oligarch Andrey Guriev, who made his multibillion-dollar fortune in shit (he bought a state-owned fertilizer company on the cheap). The government of Antigua and Barbuda claims the yacht was abandoned and is becoming a hazard, hence the auction.
Why did Guriev abandon this?
It might be because he was wooed by Vladimir Putin’s new social contract.
You Scratch My Back, I Won’t Kill You
Last month, in his State of the Nation address, Putin presented his oligarchs with a threat an inspired idea. Rather than spending their money in the West, he argued, they should be investing in Russia. Many analysts interpreted the message as a not-so-veiled loyalty test.
Putin criticized the country’s business elite for not using their earnings “to expand production, to buy equipment and technologies, to create new jobs here, in Russia,” but rather for spending them on “elite real estate” and yachts (presumably like the aforementioned Alfa Nero).
Putin then explained why that was a bad idea. “Recent events have convincingly shown that the image of the West as a safe haven and a haven for capital turned out to be a ghost, a fake,” he said. “And those who did not understand this in time, who considered Russia only as a source of income, and planned to live mainly abroad, lost a lot: they were simply robbed there, even legally earned money was taken away.”
Putin went on to tell them that “ordinary Russians” disdained them. But worse, Putin insinuated, they also had no friends in the West. “[I]t’s time to understand that for the West, [wealthy Russians] were and will remain second-rate strangers,” he said. Even with the purchase of fancy titles (I’m looking at you, Lord of Siberia), they would remain “second-class.”
Putin then offered them another choice: “to be with your Motherland, to work for compatriots, not only to open new enterprises, but also to change life around you... Everyone should understand that both the sources of well-being and the future should be only here, in their native country, in Russia… Russian capital, money received here should work for the country, for its national development. Today, we have great prospects in the development of infrastructure, manufacturing, domestic tourism, and many other industries.”
Putin Sets the Example
A good leader leads by example. A great leader ignores his own words and uses the state to benefit himself. Oops, sorry, that’s a dictator. But why get caught up in semantics? My point here is: Putin has done a hell of a job developing infrastructure in Russia and creating jobs.
A recent investigation by The Project revealed that Putin ordered a private railway network be built for him and his family, to get them safely (and secretly) to their many secret homes none of us are supposed to know about because he is a humble servant of the state with an official salary of around $120,000 a year. Maybe he’s just a really smart investor like that baby in the E*Trade commercials. Let’s not jump to conclusions.
The private railway network was launched in the 2010s and includes private stations close to Putin’s many homes. At least one station is guarded by an air defense system (take that, Amtrak!).
And what of the many homes? Well, The Project got some fun information on those, too.
The Rhythmic Czarina
Putin wasn’t kidding when he said all those riches should be invested in Russia to help the Russian people. In fact, they should be invested to help very specific Russian people, like Putin and Alina Kubaeva, a former Olympic rhythmic gymnast who just so happens to be Putin’s mistress and the mother of some of his children (allegedly).
According to The Project, Kubaeva personally picked out what real estate she wanted in Russia and in whose name each apartment or house should be registered. One of the places she picked is, by chance, the largest apartment in Russia, the penthouse in the Royal Park residential complex in Sochi.
According to an advertising leaflet The Project got ahold of, the 2,600-square-meter (about 28,000 square feet) apartment has “20 rooms with a circular enfilade of living rooms, a fireplace room, a private cinema, a billiard room, a private gallery for art collections, a bar, a SPA zone with a sauna and a hammam, several open-air relaxation zones with Arcade and Dastarkhan pavilions, Japanese-style relaxation courtyard, Moroccan-style barbecue gazebo, outdoor tanning bed and a plunge pool with hydromassage, as well as a bar with waterfall walls and mosaic floor, [and] a mini-dance floor.” It also has a helipad and comes with two staff apartments on the floor below.
I assume it also has indoor plumbing, unlike many other houses in Russia. It was listed at $15 million in 2011.
You can see photos of the interior of the penthouse in The Project’s story. I recommend checking them all out but here’s one just to prove money doesn’t necessarily buy good taste.
In all, The Project found about $120 million-worth of real estate at Kubaeva’s disposal around Russia. (In the grand scheme of things, it’s kind of a pittance. The yacht Scheherazade, which has been linked directly to Putin and thus would likely have been available to Kubaeva is estimated to be worth $700 million, but we won’t mention that since we don’t want Putin to feel like a second-class asshole whose enormous assets have been frozen by the evil West.)
All this investment in Russia is paying off, just maybe not for those “ordinary Russians” Putin mentioned in his address. But he hasn’t forgotten them, while riding his private, armored train to Sochi or any of his other secret homes. Just recently, he thanked a number of people who lost family members in Ukraine by having Russian officials deliver them…sausages. Maybe indoor plumbing will be next.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of stories you should be reading
(Note: I reserve the right to rant in depth about any of these at a future date)
RUSSIA
UK allowed sanctioned Abramovich associate to sell 16 million pound mansion
Putin’s blood diamonds: EU countries push for sanctions by May
RUSSIA AND GEORGIA
Georgian ruling party withdraws ‘foreign agents’ bill but faces more protests
CHINA
Trudeau orders new probes into alleged election interference by China
YOUR FEEL-GOOD STORY OF THE WEEK
Scientists have revived a ‘zombie’ virus that spent 48,500 years frozen in the permafrost
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
Certainly my subscription must have pushed you over the top to buy that yacht. Let me know as soon as the deal closes.* ;-)
* "It's better to have a friend who has a boat than to have a boat."