Is it true that Putin has a personal train at a secret station?

Recently, the Dossier Center project published an investigation about the armored special vehicle on which Vladimir Putin allegedly travels. The Project publication additionally talked about the Moscow special station for this train. We have checked whether this information is true.

On Monday, February 13, the Dossier center published investigation about the armored special forces on which Putin is supposedly traveling. A day later, “Project” released addition, which mentions the special terminal at the Moscow-Kalanchevskaya station as the probable location of this train. Part of the investigation is based on information obtained from unnamed sources. It must be said that a special correspondent spoke about the secret train of Putin and Medvedev back in 2019.Komsomolskaya Pravda”, who visited inside. The materials of the “Dossier” and “Project” were retold “Jellyfish", "Rain", "Radio Liberty"and others publications.

Video made on October 21, 2020, link to which (access to it was limited, but we managed to download it) the Dossier center cites in its investigation, provides a lot of information about the special train that interests us. It can be noted that the composition has the following characteristic features:

— on one side there is a raft of an EP20 electric locomotive and two TEP70BS diesel locomotives, and on the other there is another TEP70BS diesel locomotive;

— on the roof of many cars there are white caps of different shapes and sizes, from one to three per car;

- there are no windows in the windows of one - and only one - of the cars, while all the other cars have windows;

— in the lower part of this particular car there is a massive pallet;

— this particular car, unlike all the others, is installed on three-axle carriage bogies;

— in the windows of the train you can see hard-to-read route signs, presumably “St. Petersburg - Evpatoria” (in the video the train is moving in the opposite direction);

- a real-life passenger train from Yevpatoria to St. Petersburg should pass the filming location approximately five to six hours later.

All of the above not only gives good reason to believe that this train is very difficult, but will also help us find it in other parts of Russia.

Here, for example, video with the same 11-car train in Crimea, at the Ostryakovo junction station, taken on October 10, 2020 at 17:28, a week and a half before the video mentioned above. All the cars are present, the only thing missing is an electric locomotive. The train rushes past the station to the south, towards Simferopol (both to St. Petersburg and Evpatoria you need to go north). Even more curious video clip, taken from the beach near the Vardane platform in Sochi, about 18 km from Bocharov Ruchey, September 20, 2021, a little over a week before the official meeting of Putin and Erdogan, which took place at this residence. There is also no electric locomotive in the video, and there are two more cars. But something else is more important: the same 13-car train was caught by trainspotters two days earlier (September 18, 2021) in Moscow, near the Kosino platform, and, thanks to its excellent quality filming and the successful location of the camera, you can clearly see that in this case the train is considered to be traveling from St. Petersburg to Evpatoria.

On the website "Railway Art Gallery"You can find a photograph of the already familiar 11-car train dated January 28, 2021, this time on the Podsolnechnaya - Klin section, with the following caption: “There is a ghost train on the railways of our country. It is not in the schedules or in the Russian Railways systems; its windows are curtained, the locomotives have no numbers or identification marks, it rushes like mad, and all the other schedule trains make way for it. On the sides of its cars there are emblems of “Grand Service Express”, on the signs there is always the same route Evpatoria - St. Petersburg ... "

Also, the video from Kosin dispels the last doubts about the armored nature of car No. 7 - the one that has no windows, one and a half times more axles and a powerful pallet. It can be clearly seen that the container of the car (empty weight) is 101.6 tons, while the rest of the cars in the train range from 56.4 to 70 tons, on average about 40% less. The most logical explanation for such a large mass of car No. 7 is the presence of armor.

Car No. 6, which does not stand out for its massiveness, is nevertheless quite remarkable: three white caps are installed on its roof, all of different shapes, and one is offset relative to the longitudinal axis of the car, thanks to which this car is easily identified when viewed from above. This is what we were looking for first of all in space photographs of the special terminal in Moscow. The search was crowned with success: car No. 6 is clearly visible in the space image from “Yandex.Maps"(but only at maximum magnification!), dated July 2020. Nearby, in particular, car No. 7 can be seen, and on one of the adjacent tracks there is a characteristic rally of two TEP70BS diesel locomotives.

Special cars can also be seen on historical satellite images on Google Earth, although the image quality there is noticeably worse. Car No. 6, for example, was included in photographs taken in June 2020 and May 2019. In addition, it is easy to establish that the old government station, built in 1974 for Brezhnev, was reconstructed in 2016. It is logical to assume that the complex was revived to continue to be used for its previous purposes.

Special station on Google space images taken on 09/26/2015, 05/08/2016 and 05/06/2017, respectively

It must be said that we cannot confirm all the assumptions currently published on this topic in the media. Thus, Novaya Gazeta on Saturday, February 18, published an article entitled “All right" This material tells about the “small and inconspicuous” Igor platform, built just “five minutes on foot” from the existing platform of the 69th km, but located close to a fashionable ski resort, built, as Novaya wrote earlier, by the youngest of the Kovalchuk brothers. The logical connection with the resort is correctly noted in the article, however, this platform was built not a five-minute walk away, but a little over a kilometer away and on the already existing tracks of the St. Petersburg - Priozersk line, where dozens of electric trains run daily, so no “secret” railway stated in the title physically exists in the specified area. At the moment, trains on the Igora platform do not really stop, but we believe that this phenomenon is temporary. The platform was expected to open by early January. According to information from the official page of the government of St. Petersburg, a stop for the New Year's tourist retro train was planned there.Lakhta", but judging by the footage videotaken from the window of this train, construction work on January 3 was still far from complete.

Also on Tuesday, February 14, “Proekt” reported that “railroad lines were built to all of Vladimir Putin’s main residences, and secret stations were built nearby.” The reality looks more modest, even if we assume that “all the main residences” are only Novo-Ogaryovo, Bocharov Ruchey (Sochi) and Dolgiye Borody (Valdai). Stations behind high fences were indeed built next to all the listed locations, but the line as such was laid only to Long Beards. The secret station in Bocharov Ruchey is located on an 800-meter dead-end track, laid a few meters away and parallel to the existing public tracks on the Sochi-Mamaika section. The station near Putin's main residence in Novo-Ogaryovo is located just 300 meters from the passenger platforms of Usovo station, on a short dead-end extension of the line that existed long before Putin became president of the Russian Federation. All of the above together, in our opinion, can only be called a “secret network of railways and stations” built for Putin only with a very big stretch.

Nevertheless, we can say with good confidence that Putin has a personal train and that his home port is the so-called government station (aka special station, Brezhnevsky station, Kim Jong Il station), located in Moscow, not far from Komsomolskaya Square and the Prospekt Mira metro station.

Cover photo: special train at the Sinitsino platform near Voronezh, 10/21/2020. Source: railgallery.ru

Most likely true

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