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The Mysterious Shortwave Radio Station Stoking US-Russia Nuclear Fears

A popular shortwave Russian radio station dubbed “UVB-76” has been an enigma for decades. But its recent messages have turned it into a tool for Kremlin saber-rattling.

As a 2011 feature in WIRED explained, theories about UVB-76’s true purpose went from the decidedly unsexy, such as the idea that the station was testing atmospheric changes in the ionosphere (as reported in a 2008 academic paper); to the truly cinematic—that it was either a way to contact aliens or a “doomsday device, which had been programmed to launch a wave of nuclear missiles at the US in the event the Kremlin was flattened by a sneak attack.” Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti published what appears to be its first-ever article on UVB-76, summarizing the new broadcasts and explaining to its readers that “it is called a ‘Doomsday Station’ because it is believed to have been allegedly created as part of the Dead Hand system.” Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War say Medvedev is frequently deployed by the Kremlin to “inflammatory rhetoric, often including nuclear blackmail, into the information space to spread fear among Western decision-makers and discourage future military aid to Ukraine.”

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