Thread by @pevchikh

1/24 Do you want to see what Putin’s yacht looks like inside? Then this thread is for you. Today I am presenting you Graceful. An 82-metres $100m superyacht that Vladimir Putin started to use after his other yacht, Scheherazade, was arrested in Italy. 🧵🧵🧵

2/24 Graceful is older than Scheherazade. It was built in 2016 and then kinda phased out. In 2021 it arrived at Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg for a major refit. The work was meant to take almost 2 years. However, in early 2022 it left most abruptly.

3/24 The managers of the shipyard received an email saying that ‘the owner is not happy with the refit’ and that the yacht needs to leave for Kaliningrad NOW. Immediately. It wasn’t even seaworthy at that point, it had to be towed. It did leave. 3 weeks later the war began.

4/24 Did the owner know something? Yes, he did. He was in fact the only person who knew the exact day of the invasion. He also knew that his assets would be the first in line to be sanctioned. It’s Vladimir Putin.

5/24 All right, now it’s time to have a proper look at it. We have acquired over 20,000 files from the yacht management team. Invoices, bills, emails, deck plans, and pictures from inside.

6/24 Let's start with the interiors. There are two main cabins (bedrooms) - a ‘male’ and a ‘female’ one. This is what they look like.

7/24 If you are not impressed with the style, you’d be impressed with the prices.

8/24 The male owner’s cabin has a custom-made bookcase displaying a ‘Saint-Petersburg’ photo album, a Russian-German dictionary, a Britannica encyclopaedia, a book about Stolypin, and an icon, of course.

9/24 On the shelf next to it, we see a figurine of Peter the Great and the Peter and Paul Fortress in miniature…Probably in case the owner misses his hometown.

10/24 Vladimir Putin has a really weird idea of fun. Here is a dance floor that converts into a swimming pool. You can have a party or watch a film, and then you press a button, the floor goes down, fills with water, and turns into an indoor pool. Sure, sounds great, but WHY?

11/24 This is Putin's office. Here you can see a special communications telephone with the Russian coat of arms. Outside the window, you can see a ship with the FSB emblem. What we are interested in, however, is the thing the shelf is decorated with.

12/24 Do you see this model of the yacht? It's a very common thing. Almost every superyacht owner keeps its small model, a prototype, as a reminder of a completed project. Here comes the problem. THIS IS NOT A MODEL OF THIS YACHT. IT’S NOT GRACEFUL. It’s Scheherazade.

13/24 So this photo is actually very important. It’s the ultimate proof that both yachts, Graceful and Scheherazade, really belong to the same owner. Vladimir Putin. Good. Let’s see more.

14/24 This is a sea pool that they have added to Graceful. The floating barriers with mesh netting are attached to the yacht and allow you to swim safely. The pool was developed by the Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering. Normally they do submarines.

15/24 To be honest more than anything else I am impressed with simply the scale of expenditure.They are spending millions of euros on some overpriced junk that perhaps will never even be used. How about porcelain flowers to decorate the table? They spent more than €8000 on them.

16/24 Maybe backgammon for €5000? Or Jenga for €1700? Interested?

17/24 How much time could Putin be spending on this yacht? A few days a year perhaps? Does he really need 54 hair brushes? They spent €4000 on them.

18/24 You might be wondering how during the war and sanctions they managed to buy all this stuff for a yacht. When it comes to Putin, a suitable scheme for avoiding sanctions will always be found. All you need is a suitable intermediary.

19/24 In 2021 the MTU system of the yacht broke down. With the help of the Estonian company Breezemarine, it became possible not only to pick up this thing in Saint-Petersburg but also to send it to Germany, reprogram it, and send it back. Breezemarine was very cooperative.

20/24 So was the Italian company Floating Life.They've been making uniforms for the Graceful crew for 6 years. They continue to do so despite the sanctions. You can see from the correspondence that they knew whom they were dealing with. So they help to cover it up.

21/24 A very complex system of nominee owners, fake invoices, and endless intermediaries has been set up just so Putin can continue to refurbish his yacht. They deliver goods to Lithuania, drive them through the border, and deliver them to Kaliningrad where Graceful is docked.

22/24 I find it extremely infuriating. Vladimir Putin should be the first one to suffer from the sanctions, yet they barely affect him. There is something fundamentally wrong with that. We have of course filed formal complaints against every legal entity involved in the scheme.

23/24 Please watch our full investigation on YouTube, there are many more interesting details there. English subtitles are available.

24/24 You can also support our work by making a donation. This will help us to do even more investigations like this one. donate.acf.international