Nuclear negligence in Russian: secret plans for nuclear bases leaked online
In Russia, detailed schematics of nuclear facilities have been made publicly available through tender documents, despite a ban on the publication of such information since 2020.
Here's What We Know
Journalists from the Danish publication Danwatch and the German publication Der Spiegel discovered that Russian strategic military facilities have become available to anyone through public tenders. The investigators analysed more than two million documents and found among them drawings of the Strategic Missile Forces bases in the city of Yasny, Orenburg region.
These documents contain extremely detailed descriptions, from the location of underground tunnels to where soldiers eat and rest. According to a former British intelligence officer, this is a "serious failure in security procedures" that potentially increases the vulnerability of the facilities to external interference.
Schematic of a Russian nuclear facility. Source: danwatch.dk
Russian law has prohibited the publication of military tender documents since 2020. But journalists have found that violations of this rule are still commonplace. There are at least 11 nuclear weapons storage facilities in Russia. Most of them have been modernised over the past ten years, including the addition of air defence and monitoring systems.
However, their planning details have always been secret. Western intelligence services operate only with outdated schemes from the 60s and 70s, so the new information is a real gift for analysts.
This leak occurred against the backdrop of the approval of Russia's new nuclear doctrine. In 2024, Vladimir Putin officially authorised a nuclear response even to an attack by a non-nuclear state if a nuclear country is behind it. At the time, the Kremlin hinted that the use of Western non-nuclear missiles by Ukraine could be a pretext for Moscow to launch a nuclear escalation.
Source: Danwatch
