April 26, 2024

Athens News

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On the orders of the Kremlin, Russia is modernizing nuclear shelters


Safeguards to protect civilians from nuclear bombings across Russia are being systematically inspected and modernized at the Kremlin’s orders, according to current and former officials who spoke to The Moscow Times, as well as citing dailybeast.

Many of the thousands of Russian bunkers, as well as fortified basements and other shelters, have been abandoned for decades and are now being rapidly modernized, the authors of the American publication say. TheDailyBeast.com When Russians mean bomb shelters, they mean nuclear weapons shelters. Putting in order shelters and bomb shelters began in Russia after the start of the military operation in Ukraine. An audit of bomb shelters was carried out in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Stavropol and Primorye. In Belgorod, signs were installed as part of the preparation of a shelter system. In the Kursk region, it was instructed to dig trenches. Additional funds are allocated to the regions for the maintenance and repair of shelters, the Russian edition reported in December 2022. businessman.

The fact that local authorities are spending hundreds of millions of rubles to make nuclear shelters suitable for long-term habitation means that the Kremlin considers an escalation between NATO and Russia, up to and including a nuclear exchange, very likely. “The decision to check the network of shelters was made by the government in the spring,” the Russian official said, citing information about government meetings on the issue. “The order for a large-scale inspection and restoration of order was given by the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Defense and other political ministries,” he said.

The old Moscow bunkers can simultaneously accommodate up to 15 million people in the event of a nuclear war and provide food for at least a month. Another question is how secure these bunkers are…

Civilian bomb shelters are being set up in Moscow, said the head of the regional Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
Their capacity is 15 million people. They will contain survival rations. It will be possible to stay indoors for up to 1 month, said Sergey Poletykin.


Earlier, Poletykin noted that for citizens there are “simple” shelters in apartment buildings, shopping centers, which provide protection “from damaging factors” and accommodate up to 15 million people.

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A map of Moscow’s bomb shelters appeared on Russian social networks. Reduced map – this is the data of volunteers with errors and jokes, but in some part they correspond to reality.


According to information, the preparation will continue this year. And although in some areas the authorities have put up signs outside the shelters, they have tried to downplay what is happening, clearly trying not to cause panic. Demand for nuclear shelters in Russia skyrocketed last year after Putin announced a “partial mobilization” of troops for the war in Ukraine, Russian news agency 66.RU reported.

Built under the USSR, shelters allowed people to stay in them for a year and could allow people to survive a nuclear explosion. It is reported that such shelters are being built and renovated in a hurry in Moscow, Belgorod, Kursk and Nizhny Novgorod.

US officials have been warning for weeks that Russia is likely preparing a new offensive. The news comes as Russia prepares to mobilize between 300,000 and 500,000 additional troops for offensive operations in both southern and eastern Ukraine, according to a Ukrainian military intelligence estimate released on Monday.

Bloomberg: a major Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine will begin in the spring

It is expected that the operations will take place in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as in the Zaporozhye region. “This is another clear sign that the Kremlin does not intend to end the war,” SBU spokesman Vadim Skibitsky said on Monday.

The mobilization, which the US Central Intelligence Agency estimates will take up to two months, is in addition to a “partial mobilization” of 300,000 Russians last fall that coincided with increased interest in safe havens.

The news that the Russian government has begun upgrading nuclear shelters across the country comes days after NATO warned that Russia was abandoning its key nuclear arms control treaty. Moscow has been refusing to allow the US to carry out inspections on its soil since August, and NATO ambassadors said in a statement last week that Russia is not fulfilling its obligations under the New START treaty. The treaty was intended to place limits on deployed strategic nuclear warheads, deployed and non-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, and nuclear-armed heavy bombers.

The Kremlin believes that all agreements with the “collective West” are not even worth the paper they are written on, which, to some extent, was recently confirmed by statements by Merkel and Macron regarding the Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 agreements. The truth is that Russia is actually is at war with 40 NATO countries. War is existential for her. And Putin’s words “why do we need such a world if there is no Russia there?” are now being remembered more and more often.

The West will not stop escalating. Russia will also aggravate the situation. And may God be with us…





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