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| - Russian state television on Friday rejected opposition claims that a Black Sea property allegedly owned by President Vladimir Putin was a luxurious palace by airing footage of it under construction. The Russian leader has come under pressure after Alexei Navalny, his best-known domestic critic, was detained on his return to Moscow on January 17 and whose team two days later released an investigation into an opulent seaside complex it said belonged to Putin. The report, which has since garnered more than 100 million views on YouTube, has helped spur the largest street protests in Russia in years and forced Putin to deny that he or his relatives own the property. On Friday, the Mash news channel, which is hosted on the Telegram messenger service, published a video on Telegram and YouTube that showed its reporter on a tour of a mansion it said was the same one from Navalny's investigation. The residence, which resembles the one that Navalny's investigation depicted with photos previously published online, video shot overhead by drone and 3D visualisations based on leaked architectural blueprints, is shown to be in under construction. In the room where Navalny's report says is a hookah lounge, the Mash reporter finds building equipment. At a site described as an akvadiskoteka, or aquatic disco, in the Kremlin critic's investigation, the Mash video finds an empty fountain. Later Friday the Mash video appeared on the state-run Rossiya-24 television channel. "Well, all that luxury that is supposed to be inside that huge building is not there, and that's because the building is just one big construction site," a broadcaster said. Maria Pevchikh, who heads the investigation team at Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on Twitter Friday that the findings confirmed the team's report, which had said that the complex was under construction because of failures that resulted in "billions" being thrown away. "Mash confirmed what we wrote about repairs and mold. Thanks, of course, but we already knew that," Pevchikh wrote. emg/jbr/txw
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