In 2024, the Russian president was left a mysterious art collection said to be worth $2 billion. Is he the world’s luckiest dictator or the heir to a hoarder’s junk pile?

By George Nelson

For years, a Moscow widow claimed she was leaving Vladimir Putin one of the world’s greatest art collections: more than 1,000 objects, supposedly worth $2 billion, including works attributed to Leonardo, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Rubens, and Velázquez.

The bequest was taken so seriously that a 24-hour police detail was stationed on the street outside her apartment, while city officials relocated her upstairs neighbors in case their plumbing leaked. Putin himself acknowledged the bequest, signing a directive to accept it as state property, and to find a building in which to exhibit it.

There was just one problem: it was widely READ ON