Kremlin Ties in £600m UK Theme Park Project Unveiled

The proposed site in rural Oxfordshire is a world away from the sun-baked shores of Crimea. Here, the soundtrack is birdsong, not military patrols. Yet, the story of Puy du Fou’s planned £600 million UK theme park is inextricably linked to a moment a decade ago on the Black Sea. It’s a story about corporate ambition, geopolitical risk, and the enduring questions of who a business chooses to partner with and why.

Back in the summer of 2014, the world was drawing sharp new lines. Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Western capitals moved to impose costs. Sanctions lists were drawn up, targeting individuals and entities believed to have enabled or financed the operation. Among those designated by the European Union that July was Konstantin Malofeyev, a media mogul whose ultranationalist ideology and close ties to the Kremlin earned him the moniker the “Orthodox oligarch.”

Just weeks prior, the French father-and-son team behind Puy du Fou, Philippe and Nicolas de Villiers, had been in Yalta. In the opulent Livadia Palace, they discussed with Vladimir Putin plans for two new historical parks in Russia, one in Crimea itself. These were to be partnerships with Malofeyev, celebrating “Russia’s soul.” The contrast was stark: as Western policy aimed to isolate, Puy du Fou was extending a hand.

Publicly, the company has maintained that the imposition of EU sanctions spelled the swift end of this venture. “We stopped working with a… now sanctioned individual,” a Puy du Fou spokesperson told The Guardian. The narrative has been one of a clean, principled break forced by international law.

But business, especially international business, is rarely that tidy. New documents, as reported by The Guardian, suggest a more complex and protracted disentanglement, one that appears to have extended for over a year and involved financial flows to Malofeyev’s associates. This period raises critical questions about corporate due diligence and the practical limits of sanctions enforcement.

Internal charts from September 2014, two months after sanctions hit, show Puy du Fou staff brainstorming structures to keep the “Tsargrad” project alive. Key proposals included:

• Routing payments through Russian roubles to avoid probable effect of sanctions
• Envisioning Malofeyev as a minority shareholder within an offshore entity
• Acknowledging the issue of sanctions to Russian partners
• Continuing logistical plans despite sanctions
• Itemizing expenses for casting actors and office rentals
• Purchasing branded wristwatches as gifts

Financial records indicate activity continued into 2015. A budget from January of that year itemized expenses for casting actors, office rentals, and even 75 branded wristwatches as gifts, totaling nearly £500,000. Payments were linked to Marshall Capital (MarCap), a firm where Malofeyev was managing partner and which was itself sanctioned by the U.S. in December 2014. Key points of contact were Yury Leonov, a MarCap employee and Malofeyev subordinate, and another known Malofeyev associate, Oleg Ochinsky.

From a compliance perspective, this period is a gray zone. As Michael Ruck, a sanctions expert at K&L Gates, notes, sanctions apply immediately upon designation. There is no automatic grace period. Any transaction that breaches those restrictions is prohibited unless a specific license is granted. Puy du Fou declined to state whether it obtained such a license, leaving unresolved questions about the nature of its 2015 expenditures with individuals tied to a sanctioned network.

The company’s stance is that it was “caught off guard” by the geopolitical deterioration and acted properly to unwind the project. This explanation, however, sits uneasily beside the enthusiastic rhetoric the De Villiers were using publicly in late 2014. Philippe de Villiers lamented Western “irresponsibility” on sanctions and famously stated he would swap French leaders for Putin. His son Nicolas spoke of Putin’s “sweet words and sweet eyes.”

This hints at a motive beyond mere business opportunity. The alliance between the De Villiers and Malofeyev seemed rooted in a shared ideological affinity—a deep social conservatism, a distrust of liberal Western values, and a vision of history centered on traditional, often nationalist, narratives. For Philippe de Villiers, a former French minister with pronounced views on Islam and LGBTQ+ rights, Malofeyev was perhaps less a sanctions risk and more a kindred spirit.

This worldview may also illuminate Puy du Fou’s later international pursuits. After the Russian project faded, the company, according to documents, explored a venture in Iran in 2016, a curious direction given Philippe de Villiers’ public stance on Islam. Furthermore, for its successful Shanghai “City of Light” show, internal messages seen by The Guardian indicate senior executives accepted “control of scripts by the government” as a cost of doing business in China. The company clarifies that Chinese authorities approved but did not write the scripts—a standard but significant distinction in a country where all media is subject to party oversight.

These episodes paint a portrait of a company whose global ambition is tempered by a notable flexibility in choosing partners and political environments. The core product is a controlled, emotive narrative of history. That same impulse for control seems to extend to its corporate storytelling.

Now, Puy du Fou stands on the cusp of its most significant international project yet. The planned Oxfordshire park has the backing of Visit Britain and the UK government, promising jobs and tourism. It will tell a sweeping story of British history through its signature immersive spectacles.

But as the bulldozers prepare to move onto the English countryside, a parallel history lingers. It is a history of a company that, at a pivotal moment, sought to build a theme park with a sanctioned oligarch in occupied Ukrainian territory. It is a history of financial engagements that stretched well into the period of those sanctions. And it is a history of ideological alignments that sometimes appear to trump geopolitical red lines.

For investors, local stakeholders, and future visitors, the essential question is not about the quality of the upcoming show—Puy du Fou’s expertise is undeniable. The question is about context and character. In business, as in the historical tales the company dramatizes, the past is never truly past. It informs the present. As Puy du Fou prepares to interpret over a millennium of British history for a new audience, the market will be watching just as closely to see how it continues to write—and rewrite—its own.