Enlarge image
1/10
Goodbye: According to a new media report, the Russian President is currently preferring to travel to his residence in Valdai, northwest of Moscow, in an armored special train for security reasons.
In addition to a bedroom and a study, there should be a car for companions and meetings.
There are no photos of the train - but there are some of a model that is said to be the predecessor of the current one.
This picture shows Putin in it in 2012.
Photo: Alexey Druzhinin / AFP
Enlarge image
2 / 10
In 2012, then-railway chief Vladimir Yakunin and then Transport Minister Maxim Sokolow (right) accompanied the Russian President.
Panelling, table, chairs and velvet curtains indicate the special equipment.
According to the report by the "Dossier Center", the new model should largely resemble a conventional Russian railway from the outside, i.e. gray with red stripes.
Photo: Alexey Druzhinin / AFP
Enlarge image
3/10
Vladimir Putin is not the only ruler with a penchant for trains.
North Korea's dictator Kim Jong Un has also appeared on trains.
Four years ago, he rode a dark green, bulletproof train from Pyongyang to Hanoi to meet then-US President Donald Trump.
Instead of taking five hours by plane, it took him several days to travel by rail.
Photo: AFP
Enlarge image
4/10
Not only autocrats use the train: Representatives of Ukraine's western allies usually also travel by train for visits - like here in June 2022 Italy's Prime Minister Mario Draghi, French President Emmanuel Macron and Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz on their way to Kiev.
Even if nothing has been handed down about the comfort of the car: the flat screen indicates halfway exclusive conditions, the curtains do not seem quite so modern.
But the atmosphere is more relaxed than that of the Russian ruler.
Photo: Michael Fischer / dpa
Enlarge image
5/10
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock traveled to the liberated Kharkiv in January 2023.
This picture of the trip must have been carefully composed, with colour-accented mouth and nose protection, a sparse interior and the book "Woman of War" by Anna Shyla on the table.
Photo: Jörg Blank / dpa
Enlarge image
6 / 10
In June 2022, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kiev all in blue.
It is not known whether he chose the suit to go with the train.
Photo: Ukrainian railway company Ukrzaliznytsia / AFP
Enlarge image
7/10
Also in blue – and in a classic pose engrossed in documents at the table – Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier had himself photographed in the saloon car on his way to Kiev at the end of October.
Such photos are also part of political communication.
Often they should show: Look here, I take care of myself, I even work on the train instead of looking out the window.
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
Enlarge image
8/10
Climate activist Greta Thunberg did not travel in a special train, but in a normal compartment in February 2019: The then 16-year-old accompanied Belgian activists to a protest from Brussels to Paris - and braided the hair of a fellow campaigner on the journey.
Politics can look like this too.
Photo: James Arthur Gekiere / Belga / IMAGO
Enlarge image
9/10
The idea of doing politics on trains is not new: the Compiègne carriage has twice been the scene of important contracts.
This photo is estimated to be from 1918, when the former dining car was standing in a clearing near Compiègne in northern France.
It was there that the armistice that ended the fighting in World War I was signed.
Photo: United Archives / IMAGO
Enlarge image
10/10
During the Second World War, the National Socialists then ensured that France's de facto capitulation to the German Reich was also signed in Compiègne in June 1940 in the same car.
This is a photo of the meeting.
Photo: United Archives / IMAGO
kko/mgo
