According to insiders, Vladimir Putin and his inner circle are hiding in top-secret bunkers in case the Ukraine conflict turns into a nuclear war.
The Russian president may be hiding in a hideaway near Surgut in western Siberia, according to movements of planes used by top Kremlin officials.
Sergei Shoigu, his defense minister, has been missing for two weeks, provoking health concerns. He is believed to be in a bunker in the Urals, 725 miles east of Moscow.
According to Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist with ties to the British investigative outlet Bellingcat, this is the case.
Ksenia Shoigu, the defense minister’s 31-year-old daughter, was recently in Ufa, not far from where her father is rumored to be concealing.
She is said to have stayed in the city for four days beginning March 22 amid reports that the military minister had had a heart attack.
She also blocked public access to her Instagram account, where she had posed with her infant in Ukraine’s blue and yellow colors.
On March 22, she announced on her Telegram account that she was in Ufa for a ‘professional visit.’
The financier was traveling ‘at the personal invitation of the head of the region on the 24th and 25th of March,’ according to local newspapers.
She is the head of the Russian Triathlon Federation and supports the Hero League charity.
If true, Putin’s use of high-security bunkers shows he is prepared to deploy nuclear weapons.
Grozev reckons Putin’s bunker is located somewhere other than Ufa, as he has tracked even more secret planes than those bound for the Russian capital.
He also claimed that Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, is operating from a bunker.
One idea is that Putin took a break from the pandemic in November or December 2020 to tour emergency bunkers at Sarov and later Tobolsk, both of which are hundreds of miles from Surgut.
It comes after Russia’s deputy security council chairman, Dmitry Medvedev, said Moscow would strike a country that only utilized conventional weapons.
Russia possesses around 6,000 nuclear warheads, making it the world’s largest stockpile.
According to Medvedev, Russia’s nuclear doctrine does not require an adversary to use nuclear weapons first.
