Kathrine Frich
Moscow has shipped roughly 20,000 tonnes of steel, millions of litres of fuel, and heavy rock-drilling rigs to the mountain site.
History books like to tell us that the Cold War ended decades ago.
Yet deep beneath a remote mountain range, construction crews have been working around the clock on a massive project that belongs to another era.
And the bill now runs into hundreds of millions of dollars.
Buried in granite
Russian President Vladimir Putin is quietly rebuilding a classified underground command post known as Facility 1335, according to The Express. Carved straight into the granite peaks of the Ural Mountains, the site is guarded by machine gun turrets built right into the rock face.
For years, Western observers assumed Moscow had abandoned the complex when the Soviet Union collapsed.
A joint investigation by the Dossier Centre, Danwatch, and The Sunday Times shows the exact opposite. Russia is pouring vast sums into fresh tunnels and modern command rooms.
Buying records from 2018 show just how big the overhaul really is. According to news.com.au, Moscow has shipped roughly 20,000 tonnes of steel, millions of litres of fuel, and heavy rock-drilling rigs to the mountain site, alongside special air filters built to keep workers safe from radioactive fallout.
The Dead Hand
Dmitrii Sukharev of the Dossier Centre told news.com.au that the findings paint a grim picture. “There are several revelations, including the extent to which Russia’s nuclear weapons systems have been modernised,” he said, noting the bunker can even withstand the bunker-busting bombs the US used in the Iran war.
In his view, Moscow never really dropped its old military habits. “Since Soviet times, the Kremlin has continued to invest huge sums of money into the modernisation of nuclear weapons,” Sukharev said.
At the heart of Facility 1335 sits the 1980s “Dead Hand” system. It is an automatic backup network designed to launch Russia’s nuclear arsenal if a strike cuts off long-wave radio contact with Moscow.
Paul Dibb, an emeritus professor at the Australian National University, told reporters the automated system has a single focus. “It sends a code to Moscow, and if it doesn’t hear back, that means the leaders are dead,” Dibb explained. “So it unloads whatever nuclear missiles were left to wipe out the United States.”
No winners here
Much about the upgraded complex remains a mystery. “We don’t fully understand the true capabilities of this system,” Sukharev said. “What’s clear is that it’s designed for the event of a nuclear attack on Russia.”
Still, the researcher hopes the mountain fortress never has to do its job.
“I hope that no one would ever think of using nuclear weapons. In today’s world, it makes no sense. There are no winners in a nuclear war,” he added.
