Order 138: Russia's growing defense industry hides behind Yandex's blurs – Spesial

Pixels are smudged on the Russian map.

Hundreds of sites, hiding in plain sight.<br>Behind them lies a secret order — revealed by a single mistake.

Order 138<br>Håvard Gulldahl , Journalist<br>Inghild Eriksen , Journalist<br>Benjamin Fredriksen , Journalist<br>Frida Annette Helseth Strømme , Graphic designer<br>Bjørnar Dervo , Cartography<br>Johannes Odland , Developer

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NRK has worked together with Nordic public broadcasters and Estonian Delfi to uncover the ongoing Russian military buildup along the Nato border.

We have also conducted a data investigation to identify and examine 120 areas that have been blurred by the Russian map service Yandex Maps.

A mistake in a court ruling reveals the secret order that controls which locations to hide.

A little more than a year ago, Ukrainian forces launched «Operation spider web» and surprised the world. Their drones flew across five time zones to destroy a fifth of Russian bombers.<br>Among the locations hit was Olenya airport, on the Kola peninsula.

In a drone operation at five locations simultaneously Ukrainian forces showed the capacity to target Russia in an unprecedented way. Video: SBU (Ukrainan security forces)

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In a drone operation at five locations simultaneously Ukrainian forces showed the capacity to target Russia in an unprecedented way. Video: SBU (Ukrainan security forces)

The spectacular operation serves as an example of how Ukrainian drone warfare has put Russia on the back foot. The drone attack also points us to a universe of enigmatic blurs and national scale map rinse.<br>Today, obscurity clouds the Olenya air field on the Russian map service «Yandex Maps». Open up the satellite map on this location, and you’ll be served pixel porridge.

The air field on the Kola peninsula is smudged on the satellite map of the Yandex map service. The red outline marks the extent of the blur.<br>Faksimile: Yandex LLC<br>This airport is covered by one of more than 120 such blurs that Scandinavian broadcasters NRK and SVT have examined.<br>We have talked with experts across many fields, and compared with a number of other data sources to understand how and why the blurs are drawn.

←The map shows all the 120 blurs we have examined for this story.

The second biggest category is military and civilian air fields. Our research shows that 10 of the 29 air fields are not in use.

We have found 17 blurs on top of different air defense sites and locations for electronic warfare.

Six garrisons and military training camps are blurred.

The biggest category of blurs are factories, industry and research facilities.

There are a lot of apparent contradictions with the 120 blurs.<br>Multiple sources comment that it is hard to see any logic behind the way the locations are selected.<br>For instance, some nuclear power plants are blurred, but not all of them.<br>Also, some refineries, some naval bases, and some radar installations are blurred – but many are not.<br>In another example, the blur do not cover an actual nuclear deployment site, but does cover the related support facilities.<br>Some blurred locations are still fully visible on other image views from Yandex, like street map and aerial photos.<br>Even though some unanswered questions remain, one aspect is clear.<br>An apparent mistake in a court ruling has revealed the connection to the desperate scramble of the Russian authorities to protect against the cheap and plentiful airborne hazards.<br>It all started with this attack on the oil refinery in Ryazan.

This video was aired after the first drone attack on the refinery in Ryazan, April 13th, 2024.

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This video was aired after the first drone attack on the refinery in Ryazan, April 13th, 2024.

What Russia wants to erase<br>For the last year, journalists from NRK have been examining Russia’s increasing military presence on the Nato border.<br>In the same area, we have observed that the Russian map service Yandex has redacted a large number of locations.

We have created a computer program that analyses all of Yandex’ satellite maps along the border to Europe, to find the blurred areas.<br>The process in detailThe process in detail<br>The Yandex satellite maps service works in the same way as similar ones from Google and Bing. The program we built requests map data for a given area, and at a high zoom level where the blurs are clearly visible.<br>Next, the program divides the area into smaller pieces, and computes the visual complexity of each smaller tile. This is because the blurs decrease the detail density. When only the tiles below a certain threshold are kept, we are left with a bespoke, jagged representation of the original blur.<br>Grafikk: NRK<br>We are also left with some false positives, especially from areas that are naturally low on complexity, like peat, bog,...