Putin said that Anna was a woman whose influence was 'extremely insignificant'. The truth was that she was extremely significant, very dangerous to h… - John Sweeney

The revolutionaries broke into Yanukovych's Mezhyhirya estate and found a temple constructed to the god of kleptomania. While millions of Ukrainians struggled on the poverty line, Yanukovych boasted a log cabin on steroids, a garage full of vintage motors, an exotic zoo and a ton of receipts proving his thievery. Expenses that stood out were $800 for medicines for his pet fish, $14,500 for tablecloths and $41 million on light fixures. Other boxes of files showed how much he spent on spying on critical journalists, $5.7 million for the month of December 2010 alone. [...] In June 2015, my former BBC Newsnight colleague and pal, Gabriel Gatehouse, got a scoop when he interviewed Yanukovych in his Russian exile. The disgraced president defended himself, saying the hoo-hah about the Mezhyhirya follies were 'political technology and spin: and that the estate did not belong to him personally'. When Gabriel challenged him about the exotic zoo, he replied: 'I supported the ostriches; what's wrong with that?'

Life inside the Kremlin must be extraordinarily unpleasant. The riches to be stolen are off the scale, but the consequences of failure are horrible too. And all the time the others are watching you, waiting for you to make a mistake.

All concerned deny any wrongdoing.