The authorities of Moscow, St. Petersburg and a number of Russian regions have publicly published the addresses of sensitive facilities that cannot be disconnected from the power supply “under any circumstances.” These are objects that are used by the Ministry of Defense, the Main Intelligence Directorate, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal Security Service and other law enforcement agencies, the Dossier investigation center discovered.
A 434-page document with a list of special electricity consumers was published on the Moscow City Hall website. The document approved by the mayor of the city Sergei Sobyanin is no longer available. It allegedly systematizes information about all military units, institutions and organizations of the Ministry of Defense stationed in Moscow.
“The largest concentration of facilities designed to ensure military security, protection from foreign intelligence services and dangerous crime,” as investigators found, is concentrated in Serebryany Bor, a specially protected natural area. There are dachas associated with the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In addition to dachas, the document indicates residential buildings belonging to the SVR, FSO and GRU. The Dossier Center lists the addresses of specific objects and publishes photographs of some of them. It is noted that the list contains many FSO objects, some of which are known (all the towers of the Moscow Kremlin or Vasilievsky Spusk) and were mentioned in the public domain, but there are also previously unknown objects.
The list contains data on objects of the SVR and the Ministry of Defense, but not a single FSB object is mentioned. “Either they keep their secrets better, or they can be safely disconnected from the power supply,” writes the Dossier.
Investigators found similar files on the websites of the administrations of St. Petersburg, Leningrad region, Belgorod and Bryansk regions, Primorsky Krai, Kamchatka, Chechnya and North Ossetia.
According to them, different regions have different approaches to creating lists. For example, in the Leningrad region, not only the conventional numbers of military units are indicated, but also the purpose of the structures: headquarters, barracks, communications center, ammunition depot. In the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, there are no facilities of the Ministry of Defense and the FSB (not counting one building of the border department), and in the same border Bryansk region, all the addresses of the FSB “offices” and the locations of border guards are listed, the investigation says.
Information about the deployment of military units, as well as sensitive and especially important facilities, in accordance with part one of Article 5 of the Law “On State Secrets,” investigators remind, is a state secret, and their disclosure is subject to criminal liability.
