As follows from the publication, the old buildings began to be demolished in 2024, and by autumn 2026 the roofs of the new buildings were already visible in photos. The new complex occupies a noticeably larger area than the previous buildings, while the “Bocharov Ruchey-2” building, constructed for the 2014 Olympics, has been preserved.
Journalists found the contract number in a court ruling in a dispute between contractors. Decoding this number shows that the customer is the FSO, and the work is scheduled for 2023–2027; the contract price could not be determined because procurement under the state defense order is not published in open registries.
The general contractor was awarded to the “Transstroyinvest Group of Companies”, registered in annexed Crimea. Its beneficiary is considered to be Alexey Fomenko, who was linked to Arkady Rotenberg, and the company’s structures previously took part in the construction of the presidential residence in the Crimean village of Oliva.
In 2021, the government without a tender appointed TSI Group as the general contractor for the reconstruction of “Artek” instead of Rotenberg’s “Stroygazmontazh”. In 2022–2025, the company received 54 contracts there worth about 28 billion rubles.
Workers for “Bocharov Ruchey” were recruited online: in the ads, the site was called “strategic”, and payment in cash, food, and accommodation were promised, including in a hostel with a pool. At first, only Russian citizens without criminal records were sought; later, citizens of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan were also accepted, and the budgets of individual contracts in the ads found ranged from 90 million to 500 million rubles.
Construction is taking place against the backdrop of a reduction in Vladimir Putin’s trips to Sochi and an increase in Ukrainian drone attacks on the Black Sea coast. In 2026, the FSO decided to create a security zone around the residence covering more than three square kilometers.
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