A major data leak about secret nuclear facilities occurred in Russia, resulting in two million documents being publicly available, including complete schematics of one of the strategic missile forces (SMF) bases in the city of Yasny, reported the Danish publication Danwatch and the German Der Spiegel.
Plans of secret Russian nuclear facilities were openly published in Russian tender documentation and were collected by researchers. The documents reveal the internal layout of the bases in minute detail, including the location of weapon cabinets and connecting underground tunnels.
Since 2020, military tender documentation should not be publicly available. However, journalists found confidential drawings of strategic nuclear bases attached to tenders announced in the summer of 2024.
A former British military intelligence officer commenting on the material calls the leak a «serious breach in procedures». According to him, the documents potentially make military bases vulnerable to external attacks.
The director of the «Nuclear Information» project from The Federation of American Scientists (which monitors nuclear arsenals) Hans M. Kristensen calls the documents «absolutely incredible» and says he has not seen anything like it in the public domain.
Danwatch writes that from this data, one can assess the scale of modernization of the military nuclear infrastructure at Russia's most guarded sites — bases were massively demolished and rebuilt, hundreds of new barracks, watchtowers, control centers, warehouses, and kilometers of underground tunnels were constructed. Danish journalists describe in detail the base in the area of the town of Yasny, where since 2019, according to the Kremlin, the hypersonic missile «Avangard» is deployed — one of the newest nuclear weapon delivery systems. Full documents about its construction and materials used, including schematics of rooms from toilets to dining areas and underground tunnels to weapon rooms, were available. Data on IT systems, security systems, and the location of cameras, sensors, external fences, alarms, secure doors, and windows, electrical equipment, and utility systems were also published.
Russian strategic missile forces are considered the last line of defense, which come into play when all hope is lost. Two bases in Yasny are now in a state of heightened combat readiness, but the security breach may mean that Russia will have to rebuild the bases, says Tom Reset. «Changing the infrastructure at these sites costs a lot of money», he says.
Moscow uses a total of 11 facilities across the country to store nuclear weapons, according to the Danwatch article. They are protected externally by complex electronic monitoring systems, with remotely controlled machine guns and grenade launchers, and modern air defense systems.
However, the internal plans of such facilities have always been a closely guarded secret — Western experts only had layouts of such bases from the 60s — 70s. Now journalists have published a floor plan of such a base as an example.