Putin’s Sochi residence was demolished and rebuilt from scratch. A contractor linked to his friend Arkady Rotenberg is behind the project, BBC’s Russian Service reports.

Construction of a new Bocharov Ruchey residence for Vladimir Putin is nearing completion in Sochi: the old buildings there were demolished in 2024, and by the fall of 2026 new ones had already gone up in their place. The general contractor for the construction is the Crimea-based Transstroyinvest Group of Companies, which is tied to Putin’s friend Arkady Rotenberg, BBC Russia reports.

A classified state defense contract for the FSO covers the reconstruction of the Bocharov Ruchey residence, but journalists found the contract’s 25-digit identifier in court records. The digits show the contract covers 2023–2027, that it was awarded without competitive bidding or an auction, and that its price was fixed.

The general contractor is the Transstroyinvest Group of Companies, whose beneficiary is believed to be developer Alexei Fomenko. Russian media have linked Fomenko to Arkady Rotenberg. The company also built dachas in occupied Crimea for Vladimir Putin and Alexander Bortnikov, director of Russia’s Federal Security Service, and carried out the reconstruction of the Artek children’s camp.

BBC could not determine the total cost of the contract to reconstruct Bocharov Ruchey, but the scale can be gauged from publicly available job postings for individual construction subcontracts. Those postings listed work budgets of 90, 150, 250, 400, and 500 million rubles.

Workers for the construction site were recruited through social media and job-listing websites. The postings described the site as a “strategic facility” and warned candidates that they would face strict background checks. Builders were promised piece-rate pay in cash, three meals a day, and accommodation in a “hostel with a pool.”

BBC says construction at Bocharov Ruchey has continued even though Putin has visited Sochi far less often since Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine began. According to calculations by the Financial Times, he visited there 24 times before the full-scale war, 13 times in 2022, and only twice a year in both 2024 and 2025, as Ukrainian drones increasingly reached the Black Sea coast.