“Eyes on Russia” uses satellite imagery to map Russian and Belarusian military bases along the EU/NATO eastern frontier, just across the borders of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
Six organisations joined forces to identify 24 critical points of military infrastructure. They commissioned high-resolution satellite images of the bases by Planet.com and verified Russia’s actual military capabilities near Poland and the Baltic countries’ borders with the help of military and intelligence sources and experts from renowned organisations in Central Eastern Europe.
The investigation discovered that while a lot of visible military equipment, weapons systems and vehicles have been removed from the bases, there has still been a significant buildup of military infrastructure.
The journalists identified modern climate-controlled bunkers to store Iskander missiles capable of striking anywhere in Estonia. They also found new and expanded ammunition storage sites, potential bunkers for nuclear weapons and possible development of the so-called Kaliningrad Monster — a giant system of container radars, nearly a kilometre in diameter.
Based on their findings, the journalists were able to analyse how a Russian military campaign against Estonia or Latvia might play out, while identifying key weaknesses in NATO’s response.
Team members:
- Delfi Estonia (Estonia)
- Eesti Ekspress (Estonia)
- VSquare.org (Central Europe)
- Frontstory.pl (Poland)
- Lithuanian Public Broadcaster – LRT (Lithuania)
- OSINT For Ukraine