The flats with no windows are circled with Igor Shuvalov’s palace in the foreground in this screenshot from Alexei Navalny’s video

by Sarah Hurst

A block of flats in Moscow has been built without any windows on the south side so that residents can’t see a palace belonging to First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Alexei Navalny has said in a video published today. Obstacles have also been built to block residents of other flats from seeing the property. Navalny photographed the palace using the new drone he bought recently with donations from supporters. Built on the site of a former dacha for high-ranking Soviet officials, its main building has an area of 4,174 square metres, according to Navalny. It has three wings and a dome on top.

Shuvalov is already famous for his lavish lifestyle: he owns a luxury flat in central London, a castle in Austria, and has been mocked for the fact that his wife flies her Corgis around the world to competitions on a private jet. “These disgusting Putin bureaucrats consider us lackeys, slaves, nobodies,” Navalny said. “But they do really need something from us now. That the nobodies come to Putin’s re-election, sign up to get ballot papers and recognise these machinations as real elections.” Anyone who votes on March 18, no matter for whom they vote, recognises themselves as a lackey with no rights belonging to a lord who can deceive, steal and flaunt the law, Navalny concluded.

Vladimir Putin has been busy with his own affairs: appearing in a video to promote the World Cup, kicking a ball around in the Kremlin with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, continuing his onslaught in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, in violation of a UNSC resolution that approved a ceasefire, and possibly also ordering the poisoning of alleged double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK. That incident happened on Sunday but was only made public yesterday. Skripal and his daughter, as well as an emergency responder, remain in hospital, and there has been no information about how they were poisoned or by whom.