Video taking off 14x its usual first day

Putin's Valdai neighbors live "in completely parallel worlds"

A library director, a teacher and an investigative journalist describe the fences, air defenses and wartime losses around the presidential lake house.

Channel:

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Story of October 23, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 40,390 views a day, 14 times a normal first day on this channel (2,790).

We Asked Putin's Neighbors What It's Like To Live Next Door

Things we can learn from the video

Press to jump

0:00Fences, cameras and security cut Putin's Valdai residence off from the communities around it.
0:22Library director Anna Shapkina describes living a couple of kilometers away in a separate reality.
1:10Ilya Rozhdestvensky traces the land to Federal Protective Service structures and entities linked to Yury Kovalchuk.
2:18Residents explain how forests and lake access were fenced off, and why they fear evictions.
2:37Pantsir air-defense systems appear near the compound after the war in Ukraine began.
3:12Teacher Darya Dmitrieva speaks about her brother's death and the heavy military losses in nearby villages.

"The president is right here, next to me. But we live in completely parallel worlds," says Anna Shapkina, director of the library in Roshchino, a village a couple of kilometers from Vladimir Putin's residence on Lake Valdai.

Her village is at the center of a short report by Current Time and OstWest, posted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty less than a day ago. It has drawn about 38,000 views so far, many times the channel's usual first day. Much of the comment section asks the same question: how did a camera get close enough to film air-defense systems, and how did residents come to speak this openly?

Roshchino began as a retreat for a Soviet leader. Today many locals work for the compound, and Shapkina points out the bus bringing workers back from the residence. Over time, forests and shoreline have disappeared behind fences. "We can't go to the other side of the lake to swim anymore," says teacher Darya Dmitrieva. Residents also say they worry about being evicted.

Ilya Rozhdestvensky, an investigative journalist with the Dossier Center, explains who owns the land: structures belonging to the Federal Protective Service, and structures linked to Yury Kovalchuk. On screen, the layout of the estate appears with labels for a spa center, a main house and a hockey rink.

The war has added another layer. Pantsir air-defense systems now stand near the compound, and Dmitrieva describes how she reads the sky by watching one of them: "If it's spinning, there's no danger above us. But if it stops, it means something is flying over us."

The report's final minutes stay with her. She talks about her brother's death and the heavy military losses in the villages around the lake, and about the question families there keep asking: "Why?"

Published on Trari