[By GuanchaNet columnist Bai Yujing]

In a silent night, 2 million internal documents about nuclear missile sites quietly appeared on Russia's government procurement website. There were no hackers, no whistleblowers, and no spies lurking—just an accidental checkmark in the bureaucratic workflow that turned Russia's strategic ace card—the complete combat deployment of the Orenburg "Vanguard" nuclear missile regiment—into public records.

The files were organized by Western media and posted on their websites. Image source: Danwatch

The severity of this incident far exceeds the description of "a minor mistake"—it is more like a full-scale streaking of Russia's strategic nuclear system. From silo structures to cable wiring, from security logic to soldier duty schedules, even which way the toilet doors open—all are laid bare. The intelligence value of these documents far surpasses any aerial photos or film negatives from the Cold War era—it turns Russia's most secret fortresses from mysteries into manuals.

Forty-eight years ago, Soviet pilot Belenko defected to Japan in a MiG-25, exposing secrets of the Soviet advanced fighter jets, which led to the reconstruction of the Soviet homeland air defense system. That was just about conventional weapons; today, what has been exposed is Russia's nuclear backbone.

In eight words, Russia’s century-long nuclear self-disclosure can be summarized as: nuclear warheads intact, cards all flipped.

The leaked files are the "source documents" of Russia's nuclear base. Image source: Danwatch

As they flipped through them, they found an intercontinental missile silo.

The starting point of this leak was almost absurd to the point of being unbelievable. To be precise, Russia itself uploaded these materials, page by page, properly, onto the national procurement platform.

Initially, reporters were just checking the military-industrial contract project number. They thought they would find some ordinary engineering drawings and budget tables, but instead, it was like following a vine—page by page, item by item, the deeper they went, the more out of line and inappropriate it became, until the entire internal structure of the strategic missile silo was laid bare before their eyes.

The truth is even more outrageous than imagined: this leak directly points to Russia's strongest nuclear strike force—the 621st and 368th missile regiments in the Orenburg region, equipped with the "Vanguard" hypersonic intercontinental missiles. What was leaked is the construction manual for the entire launch silo, brick by brick, everything in plain sight.

The facility layout is crystal clear, including dimension annotations and document numbers. Image source: Danwatch

First layer: structural and layout details—the depth of the main silo, the thickness of the silo cover, the material of the blast-resistant layer, the position of the escape route, the arrangement diagram of various equipment compartments. Each cable conduit is marked on the drawing with its diameter and burial depth, including the distribution paths of communication cables and power lines. This means that if an opponent had this blueprint, they could precisely design which shot to fire, which layer to penetrate, and which wire to destroy to瘫痪the launch system.

Second layer: security and sensor system setup—camera placement, blind spot distribution, coverage range of infrared sensors, alarm triggering sequence—all of these are clearly listed in the budget documents with system interface numbers, equipment models, and supply batches. This is not just knowing where you are defending, but also knowing how you are defending, what kind of sensors you are using, and what systems they are connected to.

The third layer is even more shocking, involving security measures. Including but not limited to: sentry rotation schedules, kitchen renovation plans, toilet ventilation systems, entertainment room equipment lists, even the layout plan for posters and banners. If you've seen "Mission: Impossible," you should understand the importance of security measures, which are in some ways more fatal than the security equipment themselves. If the first two layers of intelligence provide information on how to break through, then this layer tells when it is easiest to attack.

People can "tour" Russia's confidential nuclear bases, which are usually unseen, like playing a video game. Image source: Danwatch

What chills people is not only the content itself, but also the way these things are presented. They are unencrypted, unmottled, uniformly formatted, with clear numbering. These files come from legitimate bidding materials of various contractors, each one hung on the server of the Russian Federal Public Procurement Website, accessible to anyone—anyone who can go online, even without a firewall—can click to open.

Before this, Western understanding of a single Russian nuclear fortress was a few blurry images, but now it has become a complete construction plan. Western media and intelligence organizations are still digesting this massive nuclear file package.

Der Spiegel and Denmark's Danwatch jointly created an extremely "fun" interactive webpage, overlaying the silo drawings from the files onto satellite images. Users can "tour" Russian nuclear sites like playing a video game—this time, Russia accidentally played for real, and the world accidentally played for real too.

From film to classified archives: a half-century mirror of exposure

Before this catastrophic "self-disclosure" incident in Russia occurred, the most representative nuclear facility leak event still had to trace back to 1986.

That year, a technician at Israel's Dimona Nuclear Center—Modi'eh Vanunu—quietly took out several rolls of secretly photographed film and handed them over to The Sunday Times. These photos first revealed Israel's hidden nuclear program, allowing the world to roughly estimate the number of warheads in this "nuclear ambiguity" country.

Vanunu was highly praised by Western media, called a nuclear whistleblower

Israel was furious and immediately launched a cross-border beauty trap, luring Vanunu back home and sentencing him to eighteen years. However, from the perspective of the leak itself, the scale of that event was very small, with fragmented information—it neither exposed the complete structure nor triggered facility modifications: no cables were re-routed, no silo covers were recast, everything remained the same.

Israel's nuclear facilities have always been shrouded in mystery, and the pictures Vanunu secretly took were not many

Ten years earlier, it was the darkest moment for the Soviet Union: In 1976, pilot Belenko defected to Hokkaido in a MiG-25P "Foxbat." This was a rare whole aircraft defection in the history of the Cold War. American technicians were able to fully dismantle the Soviet Union's most mysterious high-altitude and high-speed fighter jet.

That time, what was exposed were conventional weapons, not nuclear; but the Soviet Army still had to rewrite IFF codes, update radar communication frequencies, and paid a heavy technical and psychological price.

The commonality between these two events is "people"—with emotions, motivations, and physical bodies crossing borders, delivering intelligence to opponents.

Entering the information age, the path of leaks has also undergone structural changes.

In 2016, during France Naval Group's involvement in India's "Shark" class submarine project, 22,400 pages of technical documents leaked. This was an intelligence spill caused by a loosening of confidentiality systems in outsourced work. The contents involved sonar frequencies, combat system integration, torpedo launch processes, and were enough to be used by potential opponents to customize countermeasures. It triggered significant reforms in both India and France, but failed to completely recover the out-of-control information. This time, the problem was no longer what people took out, but what the confidentiality system itself leaked.

The U.S. Department of Energy posted B-61 nuclear bomb documents on its website, which was reported by the media as a nuclear leak incident. In fact, this was a form of unilateral transparency by the United States; the website is still available for downloading related documents, and those hoping to handcraft their own B-61 nuclear bombs are in luck. Image source: U.S. Department of Energy

In 2016, the U.S. Department of Energy posted disassembly images and structural diagrams of the B-61 nuclear bomb on its website, causing a media frenzy—the media mistakenly thought it was a leak and sensationalized it as such, but in reality, it was a form of unilateral information transparency initiated by the United States: there were no dimensions, no material codes, no detonation velocity curves, everything was told, but in essence, nothing was known.

A half-century of intelligence history reflects four faces in the mirror: existence revealed by covert photography, shadows of traitors, loose systems, and carefully staged "transparency." And Russia, by accident, lit up what should have been permanently extinguished red lights on the world map of intelligence history.

With 2 million files, Russia's most core nuclear bastions have gone from unknowable to knowable, from hidden units to exposed coordinates. Like the classic "Command & Conquer: Red Alert" game, the fog has been lifted instantly, revealing the locations, defenses, and blind spots of the nuclear missile silos. The question arises: with all the cards flipped, how can nuclear deterrence maintain its effectiveness?

Belenko defected to Japan in a MiG-25, becoming a dark moment for the Soviet Union. Russia's self-disclosure of 2 million nuclear base files has far-reaching impacts, exceeding even that of Belenko's defection.

A collapse of nuclear deterrence?

The leak did not cause Russia to lose its nuclear weapons; the missiles are still in their silos, the command authority remains in the hands of the national command system, no warhead is missing, and no password is stolen. But the true harm of this leak is the complete removal of the unknowability of Russia's strategic nuclear forces.

The effectiveness of nuclear deterrence does not depend solely on the number of warheads and their explosive yield, but more importantly on the opacity of key information such as deployment positions, launch methods, and response mechanisms. As long as the opponent cannot confirm these variables, they cannot rule out the worst-case scenario, thus forcing restraint.

However, the leakage of 2 million files systematically exposes Russia's core nuclear forces—including launch silos, command centers, communication chains, security systems, and maintenance processes. Every silo cap's location, structure, cable layout, and even the maintenance team rotation schedule can be modeled and predicted. Opponents can use this to deduce technical weaknesses, emergency response capabilities, and possible redundancy configurations.

Russian Defense Ministry footage of a test-fired nuclear missile, equipped with quite advanced "Vanguard" glide re-entry vehicle

To completely plug these loopholes, the Russian side must rebuild the protection mechanism. This is not just about changing passwords, but redesigning, constructing, and even abandoning facilities with excessive exposure. The engineering cycle will be measured in years, and the cost may reach billions of dollars. Given the current financial strain on Russia, extracting resources from the ongoing Ukraine conflict will undoubtedly be a huge pressure.

More seriously, these exposures are almost irreversible. Even if the system is rebuilt, it will leave clues for opponents to analyze nuclear weapon deployments. Once strategic uncertainty disappears, the deterrent effect will decrease. Opponents' decision-making will become more confident, and the possibility of preemptive strikes or pinpoint attacks in crisis situations will increase.

This big scoop unintentionally uncovered by Western journalists may just be the tip of the iceberg of deep-seated vulnerabilities in Russia's nuclear system. While people are still wary of traditional spies and moles, the real threat has already shifted to the system itself—spies can steal dozens or hundreds of pages, but system collapse means the total loss of 2 million original files.

This incident is not only a disaster for Russia, but also a loud wake-up call for all nuclear-armed states: the real weak point may not be hidden in the highest-level iron safe, but possibly buried in unnoticed routine folders.

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