A joint investigation found Russia used a front company to build a secret Arctic net of surveillance to catch Western submarines tracking its nuclear submarine fleet. Moscow secretly bought sonar, underwater vehicles and cabling starting in 2013, according to coordinated investigations by The Times, The Washington Post and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
The project, known as “Harmony,” purchased equipment from Europe, the United States and Asia through Mostrello Commercial Ltd., a Cyprus-based firm tied to Russian defense contractors.
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Code-name ‘Harmony’
Harmony’s seabed sensors are designed to spot U.S. and NATO submarines as they approach Russian “bastions,” strengthening Moscow’s second-strike deterrent and complicating Western tracking. Bryan Clark, a former U.S. naval officer, told the Post that Harmony seeks to reduce America’s ability to surveil areas near Russian bases and track deploying submarines.
Leaked financial records and court files indicate the network procured more than 50 million euro in sensitive gear between 2014 and 2024, The Times and ICIJ reported. Purchases included a British-made remotely operated vehicle, advanced sonar, subsurface antennas and hundreds of miles of fiber-optic cable. Suppliers said sales complied with rules in force and that they were told the goods were for civilian use.
German prosecutors said Mostrello was a front that equipped Project Harmony, and that trader Alexander Shnyakin was convicted of coordinating “dual-use” technology sales. Shnyakin received a prison sentence and denies knowingly reselling to Russia.
Norway’s intelligence chief said Moscow set up “complex procurement networks with legitimate European companies as contact points,” obscuring the Russian end user. The EU’s sanctions envoy, David O’Sullivan, said “there is no such thing as a perfectly watertight sanction system.”
In the U.K., a parliamentary committee chair said enforcement must counter circumvention: “A sanctions regime is only as good as its enforcement,” and Britain’s trade department cited post-2019 controls on submersibles and wider machinery bans after 2022.
Where the system is and how it works
By tracing ship movements and equipment, reporters found clues that sensors form an arc from the northern Russian outposts of Murmansk toward Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land. According to naval experts cited by the Post, the array enables “delousing,” confirming whether a submarine is being tailed as it crosses known sensors.
“If you’re afraid that somebody is following you, you drive over a sensor at a known time,” Tom Stefanick, an expert on naval strategy and technology at the Brookings Institution, told the Post. “If somebody’s following you, they have to go over that sensor too, and they get detected.”
What’s next
The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Mostrello and related entities in 2024, while European authorities have investigated and prosecuted members of the network. Key Harmony locations remain classified.