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Blue-tinted metal nets, known as “cope cages,” cover three rows of fuel storage tanks near the Russian port facility in Severny on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. Source: Google Earth / The Barents Observer
Russia has installed protective anti-drone nets over fuel storage tanks at the secret military settlement of Severny on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, according to updated Google Earth images dated Aug. 14, 2025. The Barents Observer reported the development on Oct. 4.
Severny is described as one of Russia’s most secretive military towns, located as far from the Ukrainian border as possible within the European part of the Russian Arctic. The site houses a nuclear testing range where 132 nuclear and thermonuclear tests have been conducted since 1955, including the 1961 detonation of the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon in history.
Today, most activity at the range is focused on subcritical experiments carried out in a shaft complex about three kilometers south of the settlement. One tunnel for potential nuclear tests has already been prepared, and another is under construction in the event Moscow decides to resume testing. (In November 2023, Vladimir Putin officially revoked Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.)
In August 2025, Ukraine unveiled its new FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile, which boasts a reported range of up to 3,000 kilometers, making Novaya Zemlya a reachable target. Previously, the longest-range drone strike launched from Ukrainian territory was carried out against a Voronezh-M radar system in Russia’s Orenburg Region, about 1,800 kilometers from the Russia-Ukraine border.
The Barents Observer noted that Ukraine has personnel with firsthand knowledge of the Severny site, as a Ukrainian mining brigade built the tunnels in the surrounding mountains, where underground nuclear tests were conducted between 1964 and 1990. For that reason, a hotel in Severny was named “Ukraina.”