The Soviet armoured train Kozma Minin. Public Domain courtesy of Wikimedia.

The The Washington Post reports on a trainspotter blogger driven from Russia by his posts about Putin’s armored ghost train.  Excerpt:

RIGA, Latvia — For Mikhail Korotkov, a lifelong “trainspotter,” one unusual train on Russia’s railways became an obsession — like stalking a rare, shy beast.

Korotkov, 31, spent years tracking and photographing President Vladimir Putin’s special hush-hush, deluxe armored train. He was the first enthusiast to post an image of the train — sleek sliver with red-and-gray detailing, often pulled by multiple boxylocomotives — online in 2018. “Mere mortals do not travel on such a train,” Korotkov wrote.

Finding and photographing the train was both terrifying and exhilarating. To Korotkov, it was like a creepy “ghost train,” with a secret timetable, no identifying locomotive numbers and its windows always screened.