The apartment belongs to the husband of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ex-wife, but the man who answers the door tells me it could be mine — for a price.  

He’s stocky, dressed in a tight white T-shirt, and he speaks with a Russian accent. He introduces himself as Vladimir and says he’s a business partner of Artur Ocheretny, the apartment’s owner, and could broker a deal if someone were interested in buying. With him is a skinny woman with long blond hair and a little boy. Behind them stretches a narrow hallway, beyond which I catch a glimpse of a luminous apartment. 

Located a 20-minute walk from the beach in Marbella, a resort city on Spain’s celebrity-studded Costa del Sol, the unit was worth some €1.1 million when it was bought in 2014 and property prices have only risen since. “This is a big, big apartment,” Vladimir says. “It’s absolutely new.” He promises to arrange a visit.  

I can’t believe my luck. For weeks, I’ve been investigating the European luxury property that Lyudmila Ocheretnaya — Putin’s ex-wife — and her husband have accumulated in the decade or so since her marriage to the Russian president fell apart. 

Since the divorce, Ocheretnaya has led an intensely private life; even her marriage in 2015 to Ocheretny — an Ironman triathlon aficionado more than 20 years younger…