For more than a decade, Russia purchased equipment in Western countries that is apparently being used to protect its nuclear arsenal in the Arctic. That’s according to an international investigative report published on October 23, with German partners NDR, WDR and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
At the heart of the investigation is a procurement scheme for Western maritime equipment tied to a secret Russian initiative known as “Harmony” — essentially an underwater sensor system in the Barents Sea. The report describes a chain of sonars set in an arc through the waters from Murmansk past Novaya Zemlya to Alexandra Land in the Franz Josef Land archipelago.
Project Harmony enhances Russia’s ability to detect Western submarines, allowing it to move its nuclear-armed subs to and from port “unnoticed” and “unhindered,” Süddeutsche Zeitung quotes American military expert Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute in Washington as saying.
Benedikt Strunz, an investigative reporter with Germany’s NDR, told DW the project is part of an “underwater game of chess” between Russia and some NATO countries.
He said both sides are trying to capture “acoustic fingerprints,” especially the unique sounds of submarine propellers that allow precise identification. Because the theater is the Arctic, these are nuclear-powered submarines — and data on them is highly classified.
Strunz suggested Russia completed the project several years ago.
Much of the investigation tracks an extensive purchasing network for Western equipment spanning 10 European countries as well as the United States, Canada and Japan. A Cyprus-based company appears to have played a central role; journalists link it to an unnamed Moscow businessman whose associated firms have repeatedly fulfilled contracts for the Russian military and security services.
Since 2013, this network bought Western underwater kit — cables, sonars, underwater robots — and specialized vessels worth more than €50 million, the report found. In Germany, two of only eight ships — the Aquarius and Aurelia — were purchased, along with a maritime telecom cable and a “powerful sonar.”
In some cases, purchases continued after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when Western nations sharply tightened sanctions.
One episode involves a German company. In September 2025, a court in Frankfurt am Main sentenced a “Kyrgyz-Russian businessman” to five years in prison for violating European Union sanctions.
The verdict is being appealed and is not final. “Prosecutors believe he knew it would all end up in Russia,” Strunz said.
He added that at least some of the deals may have been illegal, and in Germany the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA) could provide answers.
Strunz said the probe began when a “source” came forward with “documents.” Journalists from several countries formed a team and cross-checked financial records, court rulings and open-source data.
He said he was struck by the volume of information and by the fact that over 10 years “not a single Western intelligence agency paid attention.” He also noted that, in effect, “Western firms strengthened Russia’s military power against the West.” Some of the equipment, he suggested, may be used not only to track submarines but also to navigate underwater drones.
The team pieced together a presumed map of Harmony’s location by tracking the movements of Western-bought specialty vessels operating in the Barents Sea with their Automatic Identification System (AIS) not fully — but for long stretches — switched on. They matched location data and the ships’ “turtle-like” speeds with sailors’ social media posts and Russian coastal warnings about activity in certain areas. The result, Strunz said experts told him, reveals “what in Russia constitutes a state secret.”
Although Harmony in the Barents Sea appears to be complete, some of the ships remain active in other regions off Russia — to the north and northeast, especially toward Japan — potentially indicating Russia is installing similar, perhaps smaller-scale, systems elsewhere.
