Last week, a Youtube video appeared on what is claimed to be Putin's lavish palace on the Black Sea.

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny claims in the campaign video that the property cost 100 billion rubles to build, which is equivalent to 11.3 billion Swedish kronor, and was financed by bribes.

The Kremlin dismisses the information in the video as fabricated.  

At the time of writing, the video has 87 million views. 

Big and grandiose 

The film is part of an ongoing power struggle between the president and his challenger Navalny. But if the palace is now built for Putin, which suggests a lot - what does it say about his interior design style? 

- In the West, our home furnishing and aesthetic ideals are no longer big-mouthed.

We have something called less is more, so when Putin builds so big and grandiose, we experience it as vulgar, says Dennis Dahlqvist.

According to the video, the palace is 18,000 square meters and the plot is 7,000 hectares.

The property will have a casino, vineyard, church, amphitheater and underground skating rink.

- For example, he has built an entire nightclub in burgundy velvet with a stage and a strip bar and no matter what you think of other types of aesthetic effects, humiliation of women is probably always very vulgar, says Dennis Dahlqvist. 

“Architecture is a mistake”  

Dennis Dahlqvist thinks that architecture is a pastiche of older styles.

- The architecture is something of a mistake.

The style is slightly classicist and imitating old styles is quite sunkissed.

He certainly perceives it as an expression of power.

In the 18th century, there were kings who had large palaces, says Dennis Dahlqvist.

Toilet brushes for 7000

Putin is not the first authoritarian leader with a flair for extravagance.

Saddam Hussein had a gigantic palace, as did Hungary's former president Viktor Yanukovych. 

"In Romania, for example, Nicolae Ceaușescu built a palace that is the world's largest administrative building, apart from the Pentagon, and that indicates a gigantic madness of greatness, and that criticism is also hitting Putin now," says Dennis Dahlqvist.

The style is sometimes called "rich nouveau".

According to the author Peter York who wrote the book "At home with the dictator", there are three things that characterize a dictator's home: a little too much, antique details with a new dispute and a lot of gold.

- That Putin has wanted to keep this a secret is probably due to the fact that it clashes with his image that he is an ordinary guy who has worked his way up, but an ordinary guy does not live in a palace.

An ordinary Russian also does not buy a toilet brush for SEK 7,000, as it appears that Putin has done.

Putin himself denies that the palace belongs to him.