{"id":1302570,"date":"2025-10-06T22:57:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T19:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/russia-is-putting-up-anti-drone-nets-near-a-nuclear-test-site-2-500-km-from-ukraine\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T22:57:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T19:57:56","slug":"russia-is-putting-up-anti-drone-nets-near-a-nuclear-test-site-2-500-km-from-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/russia-is-putting-up-anti-drone-nets-near-a-nuclear-test-site-2-500-km-from-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia is putting up anti-drone nets near a nuclear test site 2,500 km from Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a series of attacks by Ukrainian drones, Russia has begun installing drone protection nets even in places where no drone has ever flown before. According to an analysis of recent Google Earth satellite images, the protective structures have appeared on Novaya Zemlya, an Arctic archipelago more than 2,500 km from Ukraine, where one of the most secret nuclear test sites of the Russian Federation is located.<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to The Barents Observer<\/a> , which first noticed the updated images, bluish metal nets have been installed over three rows of fuel tanks in the village of Severny. These tanks supply fuel to the nuclear test site. The nets, known as “cope cages”, are intended to prevent drones from exploding directly on the surface of the tanks and thereby prevent the fuel from igniting.<\/p>\n\t

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The image on the left shows fuel tanks without covers in the winter of 2021. The image of the same tanks with drone nets on the right was taken in mid-August 2025. Google Earth<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n

Satellite images from August 14, 2025 show a clear difference between the current appearance of the facility and images from the winter of 2021, when the tanks were still open. Near the port are gasoline storage facilities for equipment used at the landfill, while larger tanks with fuel oil for the boiler rooms are not yet covered.<\/p>\n

These metal structures are similar to those already seen at other Russian military sites, including the Olenya airbase near Murmansk, which has been repeatedly attacked by Ukrainian drones, including during the large-scale Operation Web on June 1, 2025.<\/p>\n\t

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Analysts suggest the new security measures could be a response to Ukraine’s development of long-range cruise missiles and drones. In August, Ukraine unveiled the FP-5 Flamingo, a missile capable of reaching up to 3,000 km, making even Novaya Zemlya a potentially achievable target.<\/p>\n

Russia also realizes that Ukrainian experts know this test site well. It was a Ukrainian mining team that cut holes in the rocks for underground nuclear tests between 1964 and 1990 during the Soviet era. In memory of this, the main hotel in Severnoye was named “Ukraine”.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, Severny is one of the most secretive military towns in the Russian Federation. Although the last underground nuclear explosion took place in 1990, the test site currently conducts subcritical tests in mines located three kilometers from the settlement. All work is supervised by the 12th Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense, which is responsible for the storage and transportation of nuclear warheads in cooperation with Rosatom.<\/p>\n

Since 1955, Russia has conducted 132 nuclear and thermonuclear explosions on Novaya Zemlya, including the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful in history. After Vladimir Putin withdrew his ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 2023, Moscow is actively preparing the test site for a possible resumption of experiments. One tunnel is already ready, another is under construction.<\/p>\n\t

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This is a complex where Rosatom and the 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense conduct subcritical nuclear tests. The tunnels are located about three kilometers south of Severny. Higher up the valley are dozens of tunnels where real nuclear explosions were carried out between 1964 and 1990. Google Earth recently updated satellite images of this area taken on August 14, 2025. Google Earth<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n

Therefore, the appearance of drone protection nets at the Arctic training ground may indicate not only fear of Ukrainian attacks, but also awareness: modern warfare is capable of reaching even the most remote points that recently seemed unreachable.<\/p>\n

As a reminder, in the Leningrad Region of the Russian Federation , the main production workshop of the Kirishsky Oil Refinery completely stopped working after a powerful drone attack on the night of October 4.<\/a> The fire that broke out after the hit forced the enterprise to shut down its largest processing unit, CDU-6.<\/p>\n

It was previously reported that the operation to destroy part of the refinery’s facilities was carried out by the Special Operations Forces of Ukraine together with the Black Spark rebel movement<\/a> . The plant in Kirishi has been attacked for the third time this year. Each time, the consequences for Russian oil refining become more and more painful. <\/p>\n

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After a series of attacks by Ukrainian drones, Russia has begun installing drone protection nets even in places where no drone has ever flown before. According to an analysis of recent Google Earth satellite images, the protective structures have appeared on Novaya Zemlya, an Arctic archipelago more than 2,500 km from Ukraine, where one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":1302564,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76870,76871],"class_list":["post-1302570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1302570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1302564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1302570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1302570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}