Squatters film inside Oleg Deripaska’s opulent £50m Knightsbridge mansion

An extraordinary ‘through the keyhole’ video inside a Russian oligarch’s £50,000 mansion reveals a wealth of treasures including a £60,000 vintage piano, hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of paintings and a £1.5m Barbara Hepworth sculpture.

The footage – filmed by pro-Ukraine protesters after they invaded Putin crony Oleg Deripaska’s seven-bedroom London ‘crash pad’ – is a rare insight into how Russia’s wealthiest men live away from the public eye, although the aluminium tycoon last night insisted the house belongs to a relative.

The tour around the £2billion Belgravia home begins in a study with a mahogany desk strewn with bottles of water and stationery and artworks on the wall believed to be by Italian futurist painter Gino Severini.

In an adjoining sitting room, lined with bookcases and featuring a chandelier, an antique mirror and two atlas globes, a plinth displays a sculpture believed to be by British artist Barbara Hepworth and worth around £1.5m.

The camera then moves into another large room, furnished in a more modern style and with a large skylight illuminating a grand piano. It is likely a restored 1880s Bösendorfer worth upwards of £60,000, Damon Burrows, of Markson Pianos, told The Times.

After the activist filming the video plays a few keys, the view pans over a banister to the ground floor, where there is a £50,000 dining table from Linley of Belgravia.

Next door, in the cinema room, is a large painting of Cossacks on horses believed to be the work of Franz Roubaud, a 19th-century Russian artist. It has an estimated value of £60,000. Gathered around it are sofas and £4,500 Linley chairs.

5 Belgrave Square, which also features a steam bath, a gym and two kitchens, is considered to be London’s most expensive terraced house, and previously belonged to the society diarist Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon MP.

The six-storey mansion was also once home of Sir George Murray, the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, until he died there in 1846, and later housed the Institute of Directors. It is in one of London’s most desirable postcodes, with dozens of embassies nearby.

Activists said the property seemed deserted and claimed that the heating was off, the fridge empty and the electricity off in some parts of the building. ‘It is selfish that one man had this all to himself,’ one said.

Deripaska, who was sanctioned by the UK government last week for his pro-Kremlin position and close association with Russian president Vladimir Putin, last night accused the government of colluding with the squatters.

Activists broke in shortly after midnight yesterday, setting off the alarm system. Demonstrators hung banners from the front of the building which declared ‘this property has been liberated’ and ‘Putin go f*** yourself’.

The group of four men spent about 11 hours inside the mansion before a unit of riot police armed with shields and Tasers used a drill to smash through the large front door.

A separate team attempted to use a ladder to gain access via a balcony at the next-door house, but they were thwarted when two activists kicked out at them.

Both sides became locked in a stalemate as police who surrounded them were unable to safely pluck the protesters from a first-floor balcony.

The squatters said they were the London Mahknovists – after Nestor Makhno, who led an anarchist force that attempted to form a stateless society in Ukraine during the Russian Revolution of 1917-1923.

They claimed their goal was to force the government to use the Grade I-listed mansion and other properties linked to oligarchs to house Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war.

One of the men said: ‘We have opened the building to house Ukrainian refugees and refugees from all nations.’

He also said the owner of the building ‘wants to destroy Ukraine homes’.

‘He supported the wars. This home belongs to Ukrainian refugees. There are families dying. Their land has gone. This is the least we can do.’

He said the UK Government had ‘failed’ to properly respond to the invasion, adding: ‘The same money that funds the Russia war machine funds the Conservative Party.’

The group also criticised the police, comparing them to those arresting protesters in Russia.

Demonstrators taunted officers trying to remove them in a cherry picker by sipping whisky and ice tea and singing The Time of My Life – the theme tune to Dirty Dancing.

London mayor Sadiq Khan last night said he was ‘surprised’ the Met intervened and suggested it was ‘unclear’ why officers had become involved. 

The Labour politician said he did not ‘condone’ the actions taken by the squatters but questioned whether the police move against them had been ‘proportionate’.

Speaking to LBC’s Tonight With Andrew Marr programme, Mr Khan said the police response – which included deploying a JCB crane to gain access to the mansion and cordoning off the street – ‘does raise questions’.

‘I’m unclear what the police were responding to because we know no one’s living there,’ he said.

‘But I’m not sure if there were concerns about any crimes being done to any neighbouring properties, so those are the questions.’

At the height of the standoff, nine police vans and a police car were stationed on the road. At around 11am, officers moved on the address as around 100 onlookers watched on.

Demonstrators had earlier asked for support on Twitter. At one point a man arrived with a Sainsbury’s bag of supplies and attempted to throw it onto the balcony, but it landed on top of a police van. He was quickly surrounded by officers.

Deripaska bought the regency home in April 2003, when it was listed for about £25 million. Current Land Registry records show the registered owner is Ravellot Limited, which is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.  

Deripaska has previously stated he spent no more than 19 nights at the address during the whole of 2006.

His UK property portfolio reportedly also includes another mansion near Weybridge, in Surrey.

A neighbour said most houses on the square serve as ‘holiday homes’.

Deripaska tweeted after the announcement of sanctions last week: ‘Since there’s not a single fact in support of Boris’ cabinet’s fantasies it will be for the courts and the police to decide the future for all in this sanctions story.’

A Met spokesman said: ‘Four protestors who gained entry to the balcony of a building in Belgrave Square, SW1 have come down and been arrested.

‘The four have been arrested under section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. A police presence will continue at the scene.

‘Police were called shortly after 1am on Monday, March 14 to a residential property in Belgrave Square. 

It was reported that a number of people had gained entry to the building and hung banners from upstairs windows.

‘Officers completed a search of the property and are satisfied there are no people left inside.’

Deripaska was embroiled in a 2008 row dubbed Yachtgate, after his meetings with Mr Mandelson and Mr Osborne were revealed.

Both men met the industrialist on his yacht, with Mr Osborne accused of trying to solicit a donation for the Tory party – something he denies.

Lord Mandelson, who was then an EU trade commissioner, stayed on the Queen K off the Greek island.

He went on to become business secretary in Gordon Brown’s government as a Labour peer.

By the time they met Deripaska had already been targeted by the United States, which cancelled his visa in 2007.

The Russian is believed to have a fortune of £3.2billion. Last year, Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely used Parliamentary Privilege to describe him as ‘one of President Putin’s most loyal oligarchs’.

Deripaska, who is a grandson by marriage to the late leader of the Soviet Union Boris Yeltsin, has been sanctioned by the US since 2018 over alleged links to the Russian government, including allegations of cyber-attacks and election meddling.

He called the claims ‘a lie’, adding: ‘The idea that I am some kind of ”Kremlin operative”… is clearly idiotic nonsense.’

In a bitter £650million legal battle at the High Court in 2012, he was alleged to have ties to brutal organised crime gangs which emerged after the collapse of Communism in the former Soviet Union.

He vehemently denied the allegations – revealed in legal papers filed as part of the case – and counter-claimed that he was the victim of an ‘old-fashioned protection racket’ run by the Mafia-style gangs.

Deripaska said he had been forced to pay more than half a billion dollars to the gangs over seven years and had feared for his safety and that of his family.

His one time business partner, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, has been hit with the same measures – as have Rosneft chief Igor Sechin and four more described as being in Putin’s ‘inner circle’.

After the Corfu meeting with Deripaska was revealed, Mr Osborne admitted meeting him on four occasions over the course of a weekend in the Mediterranean in August 2008.

He insisted they had not discussed donations, which are allowed only from UK-registered voters, but later admitted the meetings were ‘a mistake’.

Mandelson also denied any wrongdoing, telling the Guardian: ‘What is important is not where you meet somebody or how long you meet them for but what you do during the meeting.

‘In my case, I offered no favours and I received no favours, unlike George Osborne, who was holding conversations around his visits in order to obtain a financial contribution to the Conservative party.’