Yandex uses fake forest to hide Russian missile battery

Yandex, the Russian mapping service, has devised a novel method to conceal military installations. Specifically, fragments of a forest were observed on a satellite image of a location near the Kronstadt port, situated close to St. Petersburg, where a missile battery is situated, as reported by the Finnish outlet Yle on August 17.

Yandex had previously attempted to conceal military sites by obscuring details on satellite images, with researchers in the spring having identified 119 such obscured sites in western Russia. This instance, however, involved superimposing an image of a forest over the missile battery using photo-editing software. The same battery remains visible on maps from Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

Yle posited that Russia might be attempting to hide the target from Ukrainian drone strikes. Nonetheless, Marko Eklund, a military expert and former Finnish intelligence officer, contended that such secrecy is futile, as Western or Ukrainian intelligence relies on their own satellite imagery rather than commercial maps. Eklund suggested that the manipulation mirrors some administrative decision, and the editing in Kronstadt itself was done haphazardly.

The concealed area had previously been home to Bastion anti-ship missiles along with associated radar and reconnaissance systems.