Who’s behind the Buzzer? The chilling mystery of Russia’s ‘ghost’ radio station

Usually it’s just a slur of static. But occasionally there is a barrage of apparently-random Russian words and numbers: “Ya UVB-76, Ya UVB-76. 180 08 BROMAL 74 27 99 14. Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Larisa. 7 4 2 7 9 9 1 4.” Then it subsides into the same eerie two-tone drone.

The shortwave radio station UVB-76 – otherwise known as “the Buzzer” – has baffled and chilled shortwave enthusiasts since it was first detected in the early 1980s. Is it part of Russia’s vast military intelligence web? Or a “numbers station”, broadcasting coded messages to sleeper agents deep in the field? Could it even be evidence of Russia’s “Dead Hand” nuclear deterrent? When it stops, do the nukes start?

On January 21, as Putin’s forces massed on the Ukrainian border, the Buzzer blared to life. “Heeey, sexy ladies, wop, wop, wop, Gangnam Style,” it sang out in Korean-accented English. PSY’s K-Pop mega-hit wasn’t the only curious broadcast. Analysts monitoring the station using spectrum analysers saw the “waterfall” – the radio frequency's visual display – transform into images of wolves, Anonymous masks, and the trollface meme.

It also had a message for the Russian President: “F___ you, Putin,” the waterfall cheerily read. The Buzzer had been jammed; one of the Cold War’s most enduring mysteries had become the latest front in hacktivists' war against the Russian state.

It wasn't not the only piece of infrastructure to be targeted. Russian military radio channels played the Ukrainian national anthem, and Anonymous took over Russian state TV to broadcast footage of the invasion. Even the BBC got in on the act. On March 2, it announced that the World Service would be available on shortwave radio inside Russia after the Kremlin moved to block Western media. It’s a move which recalled the Cold War heyday of Voice of America, when Nato and the USSR volleyed propaganda across the Iron Curtain.

“There have been transmissions of music on the Buzzer’s frequency which, based on the signal strength, can only come from the US not Europe,” says Chris Smolinski, a shortwave radio expert who has been studying the field since the 1970s. “Some Americans are getting in on it, so this is obviously a worldwide phenomenon.”

Shortwave radio is the part of the radio spectrum which sits between 3 and 30Mhz, above mediumwave and below FM. It is useful because its frequencies have a unique property: they bounce off the ionosphere, a layer of the atmosphere. This means one transmission can skitter around the world.

“Rather than radio waves being absorbed after 100 miles or so, they can be heard anywhere,” explains Smolinski. “So you could broadcast a message from the UK, and it could be heard halfway around the globe.”

And anyone with a simple handset can pick up the message. Developed during the First World War, shortwave radio came into its own as an episonage tool during the Cold War. Yet its origins in spycraft go back to the 1920s, and a notorious organisation called The All-Russian Co-operative Society (Arcos). Arcos claimed to be a trade delegation between the British government and the early Soviet Union. But it became clear that they were in the business of trading secrets, rather than tractor parts.

This was revealed in 1925 when a British SIS agent tailed a suspect, Walter Dale, from Arcos’s offices to the headquarters of Federated Press, a Communist-controlled newspaper which, the authorities knew, was a front for subversive left-wing activity. The SIS began to monitor Arcos’s communications until, two years later, they passed their evidence over to MI5. The intelligence agency struck on March 31, raiding the Arcos offices with a large force of plainclothes policemen and agents.

They burst in on an incriminating sight. The basement of the building had been rigged with anti-intruder devices, and Arcos employees were hastily shovelling documents into the furnace. Further exploration revealed a secret room with no door handle, and ciphers for decoding messages to agents in the field. The jig was up.

After the Arcos debacle, the Soviets realised they needed a better method of communicating with their agents. So they invented an ingenious form of encryption: the person sending the message generates a random key – “a one-time pad” – which is shared only with the person receiving it. A message, then, could be broadcast over shortwave radio with impunity. They might be intercepted – but unless they had the pad, the receiver will be none the wiser.

By the height of the Cold War, this system was widespread among Soviet and Allied intelligence agencies. So-called “Numbers stations” broadcast seemingly meaningless strings of words and numbers – yet agents could decode these messages with their one-time pads, receiving their orders from deep within enemy territory. These codebooks were often printed on water-soluble or flammable material so they could be swiftly disposed of; thrifty Russian medics even used them as toilet paper in hospitals in East Germany.

At first, the authorities refused to discuss the existence of “numbers stations”. But during the 1980s, ham radio operators who had stumbled on them began to share theories and classify them. There was the “Lincolnshire Poacher”, named after the snatch of folk tune which would play every hour before an upper-class female English voice read groups of five numbers. Another was designated “Squeaky wheel” after its signature sound. A third became “The Pip”.

For these operators, huddled around their sets while disembodied messages emerged from the static, it was a formative experience. “You’re listening and all of a sudden you come across a really strong signal,” said Akin Fernandez, a sonic artist who later released a five-disc set of number stations recordings as the Conet Project. “It’s the most chilling thing you’ve ever heard in your life. These signals are going everywhere and they could be for anything. There’s nothing like it.”

The numbers stations still chill. But they are no longer so mysterious. In 1987, “Havana Moon” – the pseudonym for an ex-US intelligence operative William T Godbey – published the first comprehensive study of the stations. He and fellow enthusiasts, who coordinated with newsletters such Monitoring Times, and later via rudimentary chat rooms on dial-up modems, mapped out their reach – and where they were broadcast from. “The Lincolnshire Poacher”, for instance, was traced to Bletchley Park, though it later moved to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. In 2008, it ceased transmission. Today, anyone can track them online. There is even a live YouTube stream of the Buzzer.

But is the Buzzer a numbers station? Smolinski doesn’t think so. “It’s essentially a frequency used by the Russian military to send messages. As for the buzzing itself, I believe it’s a channel marker – it keeps the frequency open. It doesn’t convey any information itself. The Russian military keeps the frequency occupied so no-one else uses it, and the recipients of the message can verify the signal.”

That signal has been traced to several locations. For decades, the Buzzer was believed to broadcast from Povarovo, a small garrison town about 60km north of Moscow. In fact, in 2013 a Reddit user by the name of Bottlebob32 claimed to have broken into the compound where it was transmitted. In an AMA, they described discovering a log-book which detailed its codes, as well as an underground bunker where they “were hit with a very vile chemical smell”. Accompanying images show abandoned military hardware, overgrown and decaying buildings – and an ominous-looking tunnel.

The Buzzer, though, has moved. Internet sleuths have deduced its signal now comes from St Petersburg’s 60th Communications Hub, and is relayed from a transmitter in Naro-Fominsk, outside Moscow, and possibly others. But could it be something more sinister than a simple numbers station?

Some argue that the Buzzer is, in fact, part of Russia’s “Dead Hand” nuclear deterrent. Understandably secretive, the “Dead Hand” system was developed by the Soviets in the 1980s as a fail-deadly response to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. If the USSR was attacked, it would launch a retaliatory ICBM strike, triggered if seismic, light, or radioactivity sensors perceived an impact. Or if a certain radio station stopped broadcasting.

“I don’t buy it,” explains Smolinski. “For the simple reason that it doesn’t seem very safe. I don’t think it’s plausible that the Russian government would set their nuclear weapons system on a 40-year-old radio transmitter.”

But there is more compelling evidence against this theory: the Buzzer has gone off-air twice before. And, so far, nuclear armageddon hasn’t been forthcoming. In fact, the use of shortwave radio for secretive purposes in general looks a little outdated. Russian agents, for instance, may have been made chary by the fate of their Cuban counterparts. In 2001, the Wasp Network of Cuban agents was busted after messages broadcast from a numbers station instructing them to infiltrate the local American air force base were decoded.

The Cubans had become sloppy: one-time pads were stored in hidden compartments on the agents’ hard drives, and the location of the numbers station was traced back to the same building as Radio Havana Cuba. This blundering was revealed when the numbers station accidentally broadcast a snippet of audio from the Communist state’s foremost international radio station.

Despite this, there are still active numbers stations. Russia and Cuba maintain a handful; even though the US and the UK long ceased theirs. Indeed, in 2016 North Korea’s crackled into life again after a decades-long hiatus. Are we seeing a return to 100-year-old spycraft?

Smolinski isn't convinced. “Obviously the spies have gone to something else if the numbers stations are off the air,” he says. “Besides, how many of the number stations were legitimate transmissions in the first place? After all, it’s less expensive to transmit messages to nobody than it is to have all these agents in the field.”

The Buzzer, though, had one last surprise. In 2013, it broadcast a sudden, unique message: “Command 135 issued.” Command orders are special instructions to the entire Russian military. Best guess suggests this was a test, putting troops on alert. But for what? That remains to be seen.