The report said demolition of old buildings at Bocharov Ruchey, Putin’s official residence in Sochi, began in 2024. By September 2025, a large excavation pit had appeared at the site, while satellite images taken by this fall showed the roofs of new buildings covering a significantly larger area than the former residence.
Journalists found that construction and reconstruction of buildings and facilities at the Federal Protective Service’s Bocharov Ruchey complex are being carried out under a government contract with the 25-digit number 2327202903572000000000000. BBC Russian said such numbers are assigned to state defense contracts, details of which are classified and are not published in standard procurement databases.
However, the structure of the 25-digit identifier reveals several important details about the contract.
According to the journalists, the first four digits indicate the years the contract begins and ends: 2023 and 2027. This means the contract was signed before the old residence was demolished. The next three digits, 202, identify the Federal Protective Service, or FSO, as the customer.
The following digit indicates the type of procurement. In this case, the number 9 means “other cases,” indicating that the procurement does not fall under a tender, auction or several other procedures explicitly specified by law.
The digits 0357 represent the customer’s sequential contract number for that year. The following digit, 2, indicates a fixed price.
BBC Russian reported that the general contractor is Group of Companies Transbudinvest, or TSI Group, a legal entity registered in Russian-occupied Crimea. Journalists found that the company’s name appears in several court disputes involving subcontractors that worked at Bocharov Ruchey.
Construction intensified in 2025. That year, a leasing center reported providing excavators to a “Crimean construction company” for the “reconstruction of the Bocharov Ruchey dacha.” BBC Russian said TSI Group does have contracts with the leasing center.
The general contractor outsourced a significant portion of the work to other companies, and several of those contracts led to disputes and court cases within the first months of construction.
In early 2025, the Sevastopol-based design institute Voenmorproekt-30 failed to meet its schedule. Violations were found in work on the walls of the “main building” assigned to Orenburg-based construction company Bashnya. Moscow region-based Renmedia missed deadlines for dismantling stormwater drainage and water supply systems during the reconstruction of several buildings, including the commandant’s office and a laundry facility with “an extension to accommodate a special kitchen.”
The report said workers were also recruited through social media and job websites. Journalists found advertisements seeking concrete workers, bricklayers and reinforcement workers. Some advertisements explicitly named Bocharov Ruchey, while in other cases the connection to the construction project could be identified from the listed conditions.
BBC Russian said the initial requirements for workers reflected the high-profile nature of the project. In spring 2025, recruiters sought only Russian citizens with no criminal records. The requirements were later relaxed, with employers also willing to hire citizens of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
By fall 2025, construction was well underway. In 2026, the nature of the job postings changed, with workers sought for interior work, including the installation of lighting, plumbing and doors.
BBC Russian said it was unable to find publicly available plans for Putin’s new residence. Satellite images show several large buildings under construction, but their purpose and number of floors cannot be determined from the images alone.
The total cost of the new complex also remains unknown. However, job postings for construction crews offer some indication of the scale of the project, with budgets for individual contracts listed at 500 million rubles, 400 million rubles, 250 million rubles, 150 million rubles and 90 million rubles.
In March 2026, the Agentstvo investigative outlet reported that the FSO planned to establish a security zone covering more than 3 square kilometers around Putin’s Bocharov Ruchey residence in Sochi.