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News.com.au
5 days ago
- Politics
- News.com.au
‘After us, silence': Two million documents detailing Russia's nuclear expansion leaked
Buried beneath the plains of southern Russia in the shadow of the Ural Mountains, a vast network of fortified missile silos, tunnels and command centres has undergone a dramatic transformation. Europe has been gripped by the sudden emergence of over two million leaked documents revealing the scale and ambition of Moscow's nuclear infrastructure overhaul. Without mutual inspections in place since 2020, understanding Russia's true capabilities has been difficult, meaning leaks are viewed as solid gold for Western governments. The documents, published by the Danish independent outlet Danwatch, providea chilling glimpse into President Vladimir Putin's long-game strategy to reinforce Russia's famous deterrence doctrine. At the centre of it is Yasny — a remote military town that houses elements of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces. Since 2019, the complex has been fitted with Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles, an advanced nuclear delivery system touted by Putin himself in 2018. He bragged that they are capable of evading even the most complex of Western defences. 'Nobody wanted to listen to us — so listen now,' the Russian leader warned at the time. That speech signalled a renewed arms race, one shaped not by Cold War parity but by 21st-century asymmetry. What once appeared on satellite imagery as a modest array of fenced-off silos has morphed into a heavily fortified expanse. Leaked procurement records show an influx of cement, steel, IT systems and surveillance equipment, used to build control centres, barracks, and miles of subterranean tunnels. The upgraded perimeter includes three-deep electric fences, radiation and seismic sensors, blast-proof infrastructure, and automated defence systems including remote-controlled weapons. Life inside the complex is reportedly regimented and insular. Recruits reportedly pass time playing chess and lifting weights, while signs posted throughout the base warn, 'Stop! Turn around! Forbidden zone!' Putin has previously stated that Russia would never be the first to use nuclear weapons, but that if attacked, retaliation would be absolute. 'Any aggressor should know that retaliation is inevitable and they will be annihilated,' he declared. In a separate speech in 2024, Putin warned his nuclear forces were 'always' on alert. 'Russia will do everything to prevent a global clash, but at the same time we will not allow anyone to threaten us. Our strategic forces are always on alert,' Putin told thousands of soldiers gathered for their annual Victory Day in 2024. 'Russia is now going through a difficult, crucial period. The fate of the Motherland, its future depends on each of us,' he said. 'After us, silence' Analysts believe that large-scale nuclear confrontation remains unlikely due to the apocalyptic consequences for all sides. Nonetheless, the modernisation is real and so is the message. The motto of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces tells you quite a bit on its own: 'After us, silence.' Military analysts argue that Russia's recent posture, including regular nuclear threats during the war in Ukraine, reflects a shift in doctrine. There is a growing perception that Moscow's threshold for nuclear deployment may have lowered. 'It's important that we have a correct understanding of the situation,' said Tom Roseth, a defence analyst who spoke to Der Spiege l. 'Many still don't fully recognise the fundamental shift in security policy. Russia has modernised its arsenal — and they've threatened to use it.' The revelations come as Western nations steadily lift restrictions on Ukrainian use of long-range weaponry against targets inside Russia. Germany, France, the UK and the US have all recently removed limitations, enabling Kyiv to strike military installations across the border — a development with clear strategic implications. Despite mounting warnings from think tanks and EU-aligned leaders, a wider Russian attack on NATO remains unlikely. Roseth added: 'They will certainly evaluate whether they can reduce the vulnerabilities that have been revealed. That could mean rerouting cables or reinforcing key infrastructure — but such changes come at a high cost.' '12,500 nukes' Roughly 12,500 nuclear weapons exist today, held by nine nations: the US, Russia, China, India, France, the UK, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. The arms race, once tempered post-Cold War, is again accelerating. Leaders claim deterrence, but the threat of miscalculation — like the 1983 false alarm that nearly triggered Armageddon — looms large. Russian pundits regularly invoke nuclear threats as Vladimir Putin continues his war in Ukraine. North Korea remains defiant, expanding its arsenal and testing missiles dangerously close to Japan. Estimates of its nuclear cache range from 50 to 130. In her book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, analyst Annie Jacobsen outlines how a launch would unfold — with US satellites detecting ignition in under a second, and the President given mere minutes to respond. ' We don't wait to absorb a nuclear blow,' she says. 'We launch.'
The Sun
6 days ago
- General
- The Sun
Putin's nuke secrets EXPOSED: Blueprints for Russian bases where warheads are primed to lay waste to Europe are leaked
MAD Vladimir Putin's top secret nuclear sites have been exposed, where city-flattening warheads that can reach European capitals within minutes are launched. The Russian dictator made a chilling announcement in 2018 on the development of a series of new nuclear weapon systems that could put Moscow ahead in the arms race against the West - warning "nobody wanted to listen to us - so listen now". 5 5 5 Now a terrifying, gargantuan upgrade of the military infrastructure at Russia's most protected facilities has been exposed. Shielded strategically behind the southernmost tip of the Russian Ural Mountains sits one of the globe's most secured military complexes. And surrounding the tiny Russian town of Yasny - just one of the 11 existing nuclear site locations - mad Vlad can launch land-based, long-range missiles carrying some of the biggest nuclear weapons ever. Buried missile silos across the bare landscape are ready at any given moment to strike European countries in under just 10 minutes - leaving cities completely decimated. Images from a decade ago show just one silo lid and a few buildings fenced off. But now, bases have been expanded, with hundreds of new barracks, watchtowers, control centres and storage buildings created and miles-long underground tunnels excavated. Since 2019, the Yasny bases have been equipped with Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle which is Russia's new nuclear delivery systems that plays up to Putin's desire to have Moscow at the front of the arms race. One shocking video allegedly shows missiles equipped with the glide vehicle launching from a Yasny missile site for flight tests in 2018. There was previously only access to aerial images of the sites. Britain will be wiped off the map with nukes unless it stops helping Ukraine, warns Putin's guru 'Professor Doomsday' But now, Danwatch and German Der Spiegel has accessed over two million leaked documents relating to Russian military procurement, revealing entire massive bases have been rebuilt. The discovery of the new systems marks a "whole new chapter" on the development of nuclear powers' arsenals, with blueprints left unseen since the 1970s, nuclear information expert Hans M. Kristensen said. He added that as there hasn't been any on-site inspection of nuclear sites between the US and Russia since April 2020, the exposed documents are crucial in understanding what Russia's intentions are with their program. NUKE MODERNISATION Documents have revealed that deliveries of gargantuan quantities of steel, sand, cement, bricks and insulation have been made over the years. Alongside this, other chilling items like IT systems, electrical installations and water, heating and ventilation routing were deployed at the sites. These materials were presumably put towards Russia's new security systems. The bases boast three layers of electric fences along its outer perimeter, equipped with sensors for seismic and radioactivity. Unbreakable, explosion-proof doors and windows have also been developed alongside concrete buildings for optimum protection. And to ward off any potential intruders, alarm systems with magnetic contacts are in place with infrared sensors. Extensive electronic surveillance have also been installed, with remote-controlled machine guns and automatic grenade launchers. A modern air defense is also in place. Meanwhile on the inside, documents describe in heavy detail where soldiers reside and what facilities they use to ensure ultimate protection of the top-secret base. Soldiers play peak cognitive performance games like checkers and chess, and work out using strengthening equipment like weights and running machines. Signs on the wall of the base also read "Stop! Turn around! Forbidden zone!" or "The Military Oath". The chilling signals are written to ward off those who wander near the control rooms, as well as to signpost which buildings connect to one another through underground tunnels. 5 5 RUSSIA'S STRATEGIC MISSILE FORCES Documents have exposed how Russia's Strategic Missile Forces are able to launch heft nuclear bombs from buried silos or vehicles. Air and sea-based nuclear weapons are also able to get launched from special bomber aircraft or submarines. But the extreme nuclear weaponry has even been dubbed by the Forces as being a 'last resort'. There are close to a whopping 900 operational nuclear warheads at the missile bases, with the intercontinental missiles able to launch them and decimate anywhere they reach. Although the weapons can be used, experts say that Russia understand that they would not be used lightly, and only in a global war scenario. But the official motto of the Forces serves as a harrowing warning to the West: "After us - silence." Mad Vlad has said previously that Russia wouldn't be the first to use nuclear weapons and that the country is merely preparing in case of attack. He explained: "Yes, it looks like we are sitting on our hands and waiting until someone uses nuclear weapons against us. "Well, yes, this is what it is. But then any aggressor should know that retaliation is inevitable and they will be annihilated." PROCEDURES EXPOSED Russia's modernisation of its nuclear capabilities is something that Western intelligence agencies have consistently followed, sources told Danwatch and Der Spiegel. As Putin's puppets continue to threatened nuclear Armageddon on the West, European countries have increased defence spending, with one expert arguing that it's within public interest to know what is occurring at Russian nuclear bases. Tom Roseth told the Danish and German news sites: "It's important that we have a correct understanding of the situation, because there are still many who don't fully recognise the situation Europe is in now, which is a fundamental shift in security policy. "Therefore it's important to show that Russia has modernized its nuclear arsenal. "They have, after all, threatened with nuclear weapons regularly during the Ukraine war. "It has public relevance that Russia is capable – and it's even more important because they have adjusted their nuclear doctrine and now have a lower threshold for the use of nuclear weapons." Despite the two bases in Yasny now on active combat alert, documents being leaked could now mean Russian authorities are forced to investigate whether changes must be made, Tom added. He explained: "They will certainly evaluate whether they can reduce the vulnerabilities that has been revealed. That could for example be new laying new cable routes, or reinforcing certain places with concrete. The problem is that it costs a lot of money to change the infrastructure at these facilities."
BBC News
24-05-2025
- Science
- BBC News
The Soviet plan to reverse Siberia's rivers with 'peaceful nuclear explosions'
In the 1970s, the USSR used nuclear devices to try to send water from Siberia's rivers flowing south, instead of its natural route north. The project was a grand failure – but 50 years on, the idea still won't completely go away. To the west of Russia's Ural Mountains lies a picturesque body of water called Nuclear Lake. It's difficult to access, and visitors have to travel north by boat along the Kolva and Visherka rivers from the small town of Nyrob, where the tsars once exiled their political opponents. The lake itself, which is about 690m (2,300ft) at its widest point, is not linked directly to the dozens of nearby waterways, and the final approach is on foot along a boggy track. To get to its shores, you have to pass rusting metal signs warning you are entering a "radiation danger zone" and that drilling and construction are forbidden. Large earth mounds snake around the edge of the lake. "The water was transparent," says Andrei Fadeev, a Russian blogger from the city of Perm, who travelled to Nuclear Lake on a sunny day in the summer of 2024. "I liked it," he says, even though his dosimeter showed spots where radiation levels were higher than usual. "There wasn't an atmosphere of a threat or something. On the contrary… I think the northern taiga [boreal forest] has just recaptured the place." Nuclear Lake was formed on 23 February 1971 when the Soviet Union simultaneously fired three nuclear devices buried 127m (417ft) underground. The yield of each device was 15 kilotonnes (about the same as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945). The experiment, codenamed "Taiga", was part of a two-decade long Soviet programme of carrying out peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs). In this case, the blasts were supposed to help excavate a massive canal to connect the basin of the Pechora River with that of the Kama, a tributary of the Volga. Such a link would have allowed Soviet scientists to siphon off some of the water destined for the Pechora, and send it southward through the Volga. It would have diverted a significant flow of water destined for the Arctic Ocean to go instead to the hot, heavily populated regions of Central Asia and southern Russia. This was just one of a planned series of gargantuan "river reversals" that were designed to alter the direction of Russia's great Eurasian waterways. Redirection was intended to alter not just the Volga, but also several Siberian rivers, sending water thousands of kilometres southward via canals and reservoirs. Years later, Leonid Volkov, a scientist involved in preparing the Taiga explosions, recalled the moment of detonation. "The final countdown began: …3, 2, 1, 0… then fountains of soil and water shot upward," he wrote. "It was an impressive sight." Despite Soviet efforts to minimise the fallout by using a low-fission explosive, which produce fewer atomic fragments, the blasts were detected as far away as the United States and Sweden, whose governments lodged formal complaints, accusing Moscow of violating the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Fifty years later, Nuclear Lake is a half-forgotten tourist curiosity. But it is also a physical reminder of one of the Soviet Union's last megaprojects – river reversal – and the extraordinary lengths to which the Kremlin was prepared to go to make it happen. The idea of using canals and dams to redirect freshwater from Russia's north-flowing rivers had been around for a century by the time of the blasts, tempting successive Russian regimes. Perhaps most famously, it was proposed by writer Igor Demchenko in an 1871 booklet called: "On flooding the Aral-Caspian lowlands to improve the climate of adjacent countries." Later, it was raised as a possibility by Soviet planners under Stalin in the 1930s. The appeal was simple: some of the huge volumes of water flowing through Siberia and northern Russia could be "utilised" by sending them to the more arid lands of Central Asia and southern Russia. Agriculture is a lucrative prospect in the Eurasian heartlands, where there are many more people than the freezing Russian north. The redirected water, planners hoped, could also help save the Aral Sea, which had seen catastrophic water loss in recent decades because its tributaries were over-exploited for agriculture. For Russia's rulers, "this huge flow of water into the Arctic Ocean was going nowhere useful", says Douglas Weiner, an historian at the University of Arizona specialising in Soviet environmental policy. "It's this big bauble of a resource that's not being used. It's a huge resource. So, there is always this tempting idea that we can somehow find a way to use it. The closest the Soviet Union came to realising river reversal was in the 1970s and early 1980s. In this period, hundreds of millions of rubles were poured into developing the project, which involved nearly 200 scientific research institutes, enterprises, and scientific production organisations, and, according to some estimates, 68,000 people. Not only did Soviet ideology suggest that nature could be transformed into a rational tool to help build socialism, but prestige projects were a key part of Cold War competition with the West. Plus, demand for water was skyrocketing. "This period saw the active development of irrigated agriculture, it became clear that our own resources of water were insufficient, populations were growing, and existing production technologies were quite water-intensive," says Mikhail Bolgov, a surface water expert at Russia's Institute for Water Problems (this Institute, which still operates in Russia today, was a leading advocate for river reversal during the Soviet period). "And there was already an understanding that the Aral Sea would disappear if irrigation was continued at such a scale." Soviet planners were inspired by history's great water amelioration projects from history (including Roman aqueducts), and claimed they did not want to redirect whole rivers, just a small percentage of the water in Siberian river basins. Finally, they believed that they might be able to save not only the Aral Sea, but also the Caspian Sea and the Azov Sea, which were both also recording significant drops in water level. At the same time, river reversal was a colonial project, appealing both to those in the Kremlin with imperialist views, as well as local leaders in the Central Asian republics who believed it would be a way of channelling money and influence. "[It] was connected with bringing modern technology and Slavic settlers to those regions as a way of incorporating them," says Paul Josephson, a professor of Russian and Soviet history at Colby College in Waterville, Maine Many were bewitched by the sheer ambition. "The same magic of its big scale was supposed to infinitely inspire its advocates and belittle its opponents," wrote the leading Soviet opponent of the scheme, hydrologist and writer Sergei Zalygin, in his 1986 book Turnabout. "We are the greatest and you are against us – how could that be?!" In addition to the Volga, those labouring over river reversal in the 1970s focused on two Siberian rivers – the Ob and Irtysh. They planned the construction of a 1,500km-long (930-mile) canal using hundreds of PNEs that would, when completed, channel up to 10% of the water from the basins of the Ob River and Irtysh River to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. A Communist Party resolution in May 1975 envisaged Siberian water would first arrive in Central Asia in 1985, and that the whole project would be completed by 2000. It wasn't to be. From the moment serious discussions about river reversal began, there was opposition from scientists and experts. In the early 1980s, however, this opposition spiralled into the sort of broad-based public campaign that was highly unusual in the tightly controlled Soviet Union. There were essays in journals, letters to officials, even novels and poems about the folly of the project. In Ballad About Freedom, Soviet poet Fazil Iskander wrote: "It's completely impossible to know what's going on in the head of the regime / whether they want to wring the neck of the northern rivers, or steal the Gulf Stream!" Intellectuals like Zalygin raised a whole series of objections – from the project's eye-watering cost that may have run to the hundreds of billions of dollars, to its wastefulness, settlements and culturally significant sites that would have been flooded, the flawed science they alleged lay at its heart, bureaucratic self-aggrandisement, along with a myriad of potentially devastating environmental consequences. Historian Josephson says that, when he did research at the Institute for Water Problems in Moscow in the late 1980s, he was permitted by the then-director, Grigory Voropaev, a leading advocate for the scheme, to see the official environmental impact report. It was, Josephson realised, completely inadequate. "It boggled my mind to see such conclusions as 'we anticipate local and manageable environmental impacts'," Josephson says. In fact, there were concerns that diverting the water southward could mean anything from the destruction of unique habitats, to dangerous climatic change, says Josephson. "Ice would set on southward into the rivers earlier and deeper into Siberia. There would be flora and fauna that would transfer from Siberia to Central Asia. There are just so many things that could have happened," he says. "The intellectuals, whether they were trained in biology and environment, or literary types, understood that the scale of the project made it impossible to contain in terms of its environmental impact." Perhaps the final nail in the coffin was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, which not only consumed a huge amount of money, but pushed environmental concerns up the political agenda. Four months after the Number Four Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev cancelled the river reversal project. While some have said this was the result of the public pressure, others believe it was the astronomical cost – at a time when depressed oil prices were causing financial problems for the Kremlin. "Everything was set to go," says historian Weiner. "But realistically I don't think they would have done it because they didn't have the money." It may have seemed that river reversal as a serious prospect died with the Soviet Union, which collapsed five years later. But advocates for the project in senior positions in the Russian government continued to speak out in its defence. In 2008, for example, then Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov published a book called "Water and Peace" that argued in favour of re-directing Siberian rivers to Central Asia. And, as recently as February 2025, two Russian scientists argued in an article in Russian daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta that technical advances since the 1980s make river reversal more feasible, and that it aligns well with Moscow's geopolitical "pivot to the East" that has followed the breakdown in relations with the West over the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Some academics in both Russia and the West have even suggested that reducing the amount of relatively warm water flowing into the Arctic Ocean could help mitigate the effects of global warming. But this is strongly disputed by others, who say it would have the complete opposite effect. Tom Rippeth, a professor of physical oceanography at Bangor University in Wales, published a paper in 2022 modelling the effects of Siberian river reversal, which showed it could have disturbed the structure of the Arctic Ocean, causing a warmer, saltier layer of water to rise, and dramatically accelerated the melting of sea ice. "If you upset nature's balance, there are a lot of unintended consequences," he says. Despite a present lull in political interest in river reversal, historian Josephson predicts that, one day, the idea will resurface – although perhaps with China substituted for Central Asia as a destination for Russian water. "The project will not die," he says. "Russia is a resource empire – it survives by selling its resources. So, it makes sense for Russia, ultimately, in some place and time, to work with the Chinese to transfer water from Siberia across the border to farming regions of northern China." Even some of those who successfully campaigned in the 1980s to stop the Soviet Union from diverting the great Eurasian waterways were never convinced their victory was final. In their book Lessons of Ecological Failures, Soviet academics Alexander Yanshin and Arkady Melua argued that river reversal would, one day, make a comeback – not least because of competition over water, and rising populations in Central Asia. More like this: • The dark WW2 history written into Germany's parks• The burning river that fuelled a US green movement• How 50 years of climate change has changed the face of the 'Blue Marble' "The question about diverting some of the sources of Siberian rivers to Central Asia will most likely be raised again in the third millennium," they wrote in 1991. "However, it's obvious that this will require the development of another project." Ultimately, the nuclear explosions that created Nuclear Lake, one of the few physical traces left of river reversal, were deemed a failure because the crater was not big enough. Although similar PNE canal excavation tests were planned, they were never carried out. In 2024, the leader of a scientific expedition to the lake announced radiation levels were normal. But blogger Fadeev says there were some places where the radiation was still significantly elevated – almost half a century after the blasts. After having done a lot of research into radiation, he decided to remain cautious. "I didn't go for a swim," he says. -- For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
