Russia's Seabed Nuclear Missile Program Revealed by German Broadcasters

The day's defining German story came from the country's own broadcasters. WDR and NDR, in a tagesschau-carried investigation citing Western intelligence sources, reported on 21 May that Russia is developing a secret military programme codenamed "Skythen" to station nuclear-armed ballistic missiles on the seabed at depths of several hundred metres. The system would let Moscow hide and remotely activate the missiles, producing launch platforms that would be hard for NATO to detect or strike in wartime. The reporters traced the project to a 96-metre, 18-metre-wide specialised vessel called the "Zvezdochka," based in the shipbuilding city of Severodvinsk on the White Sea, and possibly to a separate submarine, the "Sarov." NATO has identified the missile as the "Skif," a modified version of the submarine-launched "Sineva" capable of being launched from the seabed at ranges of several thousand kilometres; first tests are said to have taken place "several years ago," and former Russian Aerospace Forces commander-in-chief Viktor Bondarev acknowledged in a 2017 Russian-agency interview that "Skif missiles, which hide on the seabed, are part of the arsenal of the Russian armed forces."

Helge Adrians, a naval officer and guest scientist at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), told the broadcasters the seabed approach would let Russia maintain nuclear deterrence with fewer submarines: neutralising the platforms "appears very difficult," and the procedure "offers the possibility of saving submarines and their personnel." The Pentagon studied an analogous concept codenamed "Orca" in 1980 before abandoning it, citing difficulties in transmitting data to weapons at the seabed and testing readiness without revealing their location. Crucially for the legal frame, the 1971 Seabed Treaty bars such emplacement in international waters but exempts a state's own coastal regions — the broadcasters said Russia intends to site Skythen in its own waters. NATO and Russia's defence ministry declined to comment; Russia's Berlin embassy said it had no information.

The same day, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, NATO General Markus Laubenthal argued that the alliance's greatest current deterrence risk is not Russian innovation but European production. With Russia on a full war economy and U.S. capabilities stretched, Europe faces a narrow window in which to close capability gaps, replenish reserves, and prepare to replace U.S.-provided capabilities before Russia fully reconstitutes its forces — particularly for air-defence missiles and drones, where production lines are slow and regulatory hurdles thick. Laubenthal's framing — that the transatlantic partnership remains the backbone of European security but that Europe cannot delude itself the U.S. will indefinitely carry half of NATO's capabilities — reads as a direct counterweight to the Skythen reveal: Russia is building new launchers Europe cannot easily detect, and Europe is not yet building the interceptors and drones it needs to deter the existing ones.