President Putin's spokesman, Dimitry Peskov, has descended the same slippery slope traversed by Patriarch Kirill with his 'disappearing Breguet' a few years ago.
" [Tatyana] Navka, who won a gold medal for ice dancing at the 2006 Winter Olympics, announced that she and Peskov would marry in Sochi, Putin's favorite Black Sea resort. The event took place in one of the town's most expensive hotels, the Rodina Grand, last Saturday. When I tried today to pre-book a night at the Rodina (which translates to English as Motherland) for the end of September, the cheapest room cost $500 per night. Peskov and Navka booked the entire hotel.
Putin's longtime opponent, corruption fighter Alexei Navalny, however, ....identified the timepiece as a Richard Mille RM 52-01, one of a limited edition of just 30, and wrote to a U.S. store that sells them to discover the price: $620,000.
Responding to the outrage and derision ....the presidential press secretary said the watch was a wedding present from Navka and that it was "very expensive indeed but much cheaper than certain people claim." Navka backed him up. "I'm an Olympic champion and I work a lot, including all summer," she told the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda. "Before the wedding, I wondered what I could get the man I love. And I found a solution and I bought this great watch."
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2 ... cmpid=yhoo
The article ridicules the figure skater's explanation, insinuating it was hastily contrived.
Who knows, though ? It seems to me that maybe Tatyana Navka did give it to him, but 15 months earlier, when Peskov was first observed sporting the trinket.
Likely, the Olympic medalist was trying to hide the date of the beginning of their relationship to avoid scandal for Peskov, whose wife left him after discovering his betrayal.
Nonetheless, we hear here shades of Putin's much-discussed Olympic gymnast friend, Alina Kabaeva, along with Patriarch Kirill's "No, not I, I would never own a Breguet.......Ummm.....I see. Yes, there is a reflection of a Breguet on the polished Danilov Monastery table top. Oh, you mean THAT ? Uh, ummm, I think I remember that it was given to me. [ Defensively ] Our "Motherland's" officials are often given substantial gifts. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with a Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia sporting such a dazzlingly costly timepiece. Do you hear ?"