By GB News (World News) | Created at 2026-09-27 13:11:07 | Updated at 2026-09-27 13:58:28
58 minutes ago
Russia is rebuilding a vast underground nuclear command centre buried deep inside a mountain in the Urals, a major investigation has revealed.
The facility, known by its codename Facility 1335, sits beneath Kosvinsky Kamen mountain and forms the backbone of Moscow's so-called Dead Hand programme, a Cold War-era strategy designed to guarantee devastating retaliatory nuclear strikes against the West.
Protected by machine gun emplacements, the 24-room tunnel complex was originally constructed during the Cold War to ensure mutual destruction in the event of a nuclear attack on Russia.
A joint investigation by The Sunday Times, Danish media organisation Danwatch and the Dossier Center has uncovered evidence that the site has been extensively reconstructed, with a massive new structure rising at the mountain's base at a cost running into hundreds of millions of pounds.
Procurement records reveal that since 2018, Moscow has transported vast quantities of heavy excavation machinery, rock-drilling equipment, steel, piping and cabling to the mountain site.
The sheer volume of materials consumed underscores the project's ambition: roughly three million litres of fuel, 823,000 litres of gas and approximately 20,000 tonnes of steel, equivalent in weight to around three Eiffel Towers.
Enough concrete has been poured to cover at least 150,000 square metres of surface area, sufficient for a large multi-storey building.
Mine ventilation systems and sophisticated air filtration units designed to filter out chemical, biological and radioactive contamination have also been shipped to the location, according to the investigation.
Vladimir Putin has resuscitated the proposals for the bunker
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The most intensive phase of construction took place between 2020 and 2021, procurement documents indicate.
Initial hints about the project's revival emerged in 2020, when the Kremlin published transcripts of a meeting between Putin and his most senior military officials.
During those discussions, the Russian president addressed the critical importance of ensuring his country's nuclear command and control systems could withstand an attack.
"We are aware that a lot depends on the survivability of these systems and their ability to continue operating in a combat environment," Putin said
President Trump met with Putin last year in Alaska
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He added: "They have told me that the creation of an absolutely secure facility for controlling strategic nuclear forces, among others, is nearing completion, and that it will have a very high safety margin."
The bunker's core function is to activate backup control channels should communication with the Kremlin's senior leadership be severed, transmitting long-wave radio signals to mobilise missile launchers for a retaliatory strike.
Tom Roseth, a Russian security policy expert at the Norwegian Staff College, told The Sunday Times: "It appears that the Russians are securing this facility against every type of attack."
He noted that protecting Facility 1335 and its nuclear command infrastructure required digging deeper and reinforcing the site further, adding that the expansion followed a major modernisation of Russia's atomic arsenal.
The base is beneath the foothills of Kosvinsky Kamen
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Mr Roseth added: "The perimeter will once again be given priority now, in a more tense geopolitical situation in which Russia sees itself as being in conflict with the West."
In a military publication this year, Colonel Yu Andreev, a veteran of Russia's aerospace defence directorate, suggested troops stationed at the bunker would "fulfil their historic mission of retaliation against any enemy who encroaches on our independence."
Russia's former president Dmitry Medvedev also alluded to the Dead Hand strategy last year, warning Donald Trump on Telegram to consider "how dangerous a 'dead hand' can be."
The revelations come as Defence Secretary Wes Streeting identified Russia and President Putin as the most significant threat to Britain's security, warning the country faces the highest risk of conflict in his lifetime.
Speaking ahead of Labour's conference in Liverpool, he said: "Without a shadow of a doubt, the biggest threat facing Britain is Russia and President Putin."
Streeting pointed to the war on Europe's doorstep and Putin's expansionist ambitions, describing how Moscow is "constantly testing Britain's defences, Nato defences and testing the strength of our alliances."
The Defence Secretary said this threat underpinned the government's decision to deliver the largest sustained rise in defence spending since the Cold War ended.
"Strength builds deterrence, and deterrence makes it far less likely that we will end up in a place we don't want to be which is at war with Russia or, indeed, anyone else," he said.
