Putin Gets a Snub in the Vast Wine Cellars of a Former Soviet Republic

Hermann Goering, Hitler’s right-hand man, survived the cut.His bottles of wine — part of a collection seized by the Soviet army as a trophy at the end of World War II and deposited in a labyrinthine underground cellar in Moldova — are still on display.A gift of 460 bottles given in 2013 to then Secretary of State John Kerry when he visited the former Soviet republic is also there, kept in his name in a cubbyhole in the vast system of tunnels.

(The State Department reported their value as $8,339.50, which might explain why Mr.Kerry chose to leave them behind.)But President Vladimir V.

Putin of Russia, who twice visited the cellars operated by the state-owned Cricova Winery, has been banished.His wine bottles, along with his photograph, have been removed from view in the vast complex of underground tunnels that twist and turn over 75 miles under vineyards north of the Moldovan capital, Chisinau.After Mr.

Putin began a full-scale invasion of Moldova’s neighbor, Ukraine, in 2022, the winery “got lots of questions that we could not answer about why he was still here,” said Sorin Maslo, the director.Mr.Putin’s wine collection, a gift to him from Moldova’s former communist president, has not been destroyed, Mr.

Maslo said.The bottles, he added, had been moved to a dark, sealed-off corner of the cellar so that “nobody has to deal with him.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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