Russian President Vladimir Putin denied poisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s claims that he owns a sumptuous multi-billion dollar palace built with fraudulently obtained money.
The dissident claimed in a video watched by some 86 million people last week that Putin paid allies, including oil chiefs and billionaires, to build the $ 1.35 billion Black Sea Palace.
It is said to have a casino, an ice rink and a vineyard.
“Nothing listed there as owned by me or my close relatives and never did,” Putin told students during a video conference Monday, the BBC reported.
The strongman called the video a “compilation and montage” and said he thought it was “boring”.
Putin, who was questioned by student Danil Chemezov, 20, at an event that marked the students’ day, admitted that he had not watched the entire video due to a “shortage of time,” but that he was “flipping through the video selections that my assistants brought me, ”said East2West News.
His denial came when two Kremlin guards were fired after attending a major protest against him, the outlet reported.
Mikhail and Maksim Terekhov, 21-year-old twins, served in a unit of the Federal Security Service, which, according to BAZA online media, is under Putin’s command.
The brothers had gone to Pushkin Square in Moscow on Saturday and then had a fight, with Mikhail leaving after saying it was “dangerous” to stay there.
His brother, who was left behind, was detained and is expected to appear in court, the press said.
Both men were told they had been fired, the report said.
Meanwhile, Putin said underage children should not participate in pro-Navalny protests, adding that police must also act within the law, Reuters reported.
No one should try to advance “their ambitious goals and goals, especially in politics,” through protests, he said in a clear reference to Navalny.
The dissident was taken into custody on January 17 after flying home for the first time since he was poisoned last summer.
His detention was ordered by the Moscow Prison Service in connection with alleged violations of a suspended prison sentence in an embezzlement he said was fabricated.
Navalny fell into a coma on August 20 during a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow. Two days later he was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to a hospital in Berlin.