Russia is undertaking a major factory expansion in remote Siberia to ramp up production of a powerful explosive used in artillery shells and other munitions in the war in Ukraine, a Reuters review of publicly available state documents and satellite imagery has found.
Moscow’s ability to muster more shells than Ukraine has played an important part in Russia's battlefield successes during the conflict, which has mostly been fought with big guns and drones. However, Moscow has needed to import huge quantities of shells from North Korea, and its own munitions stockpiles are dwindling, according to the United States and Ukraine.
The additional explosive anticipated from the project, which has not previously been reported, could help increase Moscow's firepower significantly at a time when Ukraine and its Western allies have been stepping up production of ordnance needed to thwart Russian advances, three defense analysts said. News of its existence comes as Russia has been pounding Ukraine with artillery, missile and drone strikes, and as U.S. President Donald Trump presses for a deal to end the war, which began with Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The documents show that a new production line is being built at a factory owned by state defense company Ya. M. Sverdlov Plant, a major Russian manufacturer of military-grade explosives.
The evidence uncovered by Reuters points strongly to a facility to start making RDX, a high explosive that is not currently produced at Sverdlov Plant’s factory, the Biysk Oleum Plant (BOZ), Reuters found. However, most of the experts consulted by the news agency did not rule out the possibility that it could be for the production of HMX, another high explosive with a similar molecular structure. High explosives are ones that detonate rapidly and are designed for maximum destruction.
The BOZ factory is located near the Siberian city of Biysk, about 3,000 km (1,860 miles) east of Moscow. That puts it out of range of most Ukrainian attack drones, which have targeted the Russian arms industry.
Satellite imagery of the site shows the construction of new buildings and other infrastructure described in the documents, Reuters found.
A person close to the project and a construction contractor, who both spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that a major expansion was underway at BOZ.
The Russian defense ministry did not respond to detailed questions about Reuters’ findings. The Kremlin and Sverdlov Plant declined to comment. BOZ also did not comment.
The new facility was expected to produce 6,000 metric tons of high explosive annually and was scheduled for completion this year, according to a draft design contract that was posted on the state procurement website in 2023 and later taken down.
That is "a huge amount" and "would be of great benefit to Russian defense capabilities," said Thomas Klapoetke, an explosives expert at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, when asked about the Reuters findings.
The output capacity would, for example, be enough to fill the warheads of 1.28 million of Russia's OF-29 artillery shells, a common long-range projectile that measures 152 mm in diameter, according to a Reuters calculation based on scientific literature and verified by another explosives expert.
In 2024, Russia produced around 2 million 122 mm and 152 mm caliber artillery rounds, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, known as GUR, told Reuters. It also imported about 2.7 million from North Korea, GUR said.
However, the North Korean shells have mostly been of poor quality, said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British security think tank.
"Increasing the volume of high explosive available for filling munitions therefore is critical to Russia's ability to continue the war," he told Reuters.
Ukraine’s GUR did not comment on Russia’s plans for the new production line.
The plans are set out in dozens of documents posted by the defense ministry's General Directorate for Special Construction on the state procurement website between February 2023 and September 2024, and by the Biysk city hall on its website ahead of a planned October 2024 environmental impact hearing.
Both the procurement documents, which sought bids to help build the infrastructure required, and the city hall documents use a code to identify what will be produced: "GOST RV 1376-001-2006."
That was a code for RDX, according to a list of codes included with instructions issued by the Russian Ministry for Industry and Trade in 2014 for enterprises seeking to obtain explosives for industrial purposes. The instructions were posted on consultant.ru, a commercial online database of Russian laws and regulations, which procurement records show is used by Russian state entities.
The industry ministry declined to comment on whether the code used in documents reviewed by Reuters is still a code for RDX.
However, details in the new plans are consistent with the production of RDX or HMX, which can be made using a similar manufacturing process, three experts told Reuters. The documents identify areas for the production of urotropine and to store nitric acid, chemicals needed to make both explosives.
In 2020, city officials sought public comment on a blueprint for a smaller project at the BOZ factory that stated openly that the aim was to produce 3,000 tons of RDX annually along with smaller quantities of other explosives.
Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources concluded in 2021 that this project did not meet environmental standards, without elaborating. But some of the construction described in the 2020 blueprint is replicated in the current plans, including buildings for urotropine production and nitric acid storage.
Reuters could not determine whether the environmental authority was consulted about the current project. Its media office did not answer questions for this report, and the Biysk city hall said it had no information about the factory.
The documents reviewed by Reuters do not state the intended use of the additional explosive that will be produced at BOZ.
RDX can have civilian applications, including in mining and construction. However, the documents indicate a military operation. Specifically, a state-run defense company is in charge of building the facility, and an arm of the defense ministry is the lead contractor, the documents show.
RDX is a component of many artillery shells, mortar rounds, missiles and aerial bombs Russia is known to have deployed in Ukraine.
Often used in combination with other high explosives, it is valued by militaries because it is more powerful than TNT and more stable than HMX, meaning it is less likely to detonate unexpectedly, said Watling, of RUSI.
Sverdlov Plant is Russia's only significant maker of RDX and HMX, according to a Ukrainian intelligence official and the Council of the European Union, which sanctioned the company in 2023 for supplying explosives to the Russian armed forces during the Ukraine conflict.
It has been producing both explosives at its headquarters in Dzerzhinsk, about 360 km east of Moscow, since 2019, according to a statement that year by the Kazan National Research Technological University, which helped design the manufacturing process used there.
But the Dzerzhinsk site is now within striking distance of Ukrainian long-range drones, making it vulnerable to attack. Four people were injured in a drone strike in the city’s industrial zone on the night of Oct. 19, the regional governor said in a post on his Telegram account.
Russia’s current RDX output is not public, so Reuters could not determine by how much the new facility would increase production capacity.
The extra explosive will not resolve all bottlenecks in the Russian munitions supply chain. Moscow also faces war-related labor shortages, and Western trade sanctions have made sourcing foreign-made machine tools challenging, according to a 2024 report by RUSI and the Open Source Centre, a U.K.-based research group.
Still, U.S. Army General Christopher Cavoli, who commands U.S. forces in Europe, told American lawmakers on April 3 that he anticipates Russia will be able to produce 250,000 artillery shells per month, or 3 million per year. That would put Russia on track to build a stockpile three times greater than the U.S. and Europe combined, he said without specifying when that might happen.
The U.S. European Command said it did not have additional information.
Ukrainian commanders say European and U.S. efforts under the Biden administration to increase the supply of shells to Kyiv have paid off, easing dire shortages. But a global explosives shortage has constrained efforts by Kyiv and its allies to ramp up production.
The future of aid from the United States, Kyiv's single biggest military donor, appears increasingly uncertain. Trump has criticized the scale of U.S. assistance under his predecessor, and there have been no new aid authorisations since he took office.
The budget for Russia's new explosives facility was set at 15.5 billion roubles ($189.26 million) money that would come from a special government fund for priority projects and natural disasters, tender documents show. The work was to start in 2023 and be completed by the end of 2025.
At least some buildings appeared to be nearing completion last summer, according to documents on the state procurement website. In August, contracts were awarded to supply furniture and install polymer floor coverings, usually one of the finishing touches in industrial buildings.
Once all the infrastructure is in place, production could begin in as little as six to 10 weeks, assuming no major technical hitches, said Klapoetke, the explosives specialist in Munich.
Reuters was unable to establish if the project was on track to meet the deadline.
The plans call for the renovation or construction of at least 20 buildings, including additional warehouses for the finished product. They also call for new tunnels and blast walls, and the extension of a railway.
A Reuters analysis of dozens of images captured by Planet Labs, Maxar Technologies, European Space Agency and Airbus DS satellites found that workers began clearing at least 0.7 square kilometers of trees in September 2023 to make way for new structures. Huge logs can be seen scattered on the ground in images captured over subsequent months.
Reuters confirmed that the images show the BOZ factory by comparing the shape and positions of buildings, a hill and bodies of water to features shown on maps obtained from the Russian land ownership registry and in a marketing video posted on a cached version of BOZ's website.
All 20 buildings described in the plans posted on the state procurement website appeared to be at some stage of construction or renovation by March 29. The arrangement and shapes of these buildings match what is shown on a map included with the plans.
The project has faced multiple setbacks, which could affect the timeline, Reuters found.
When Russia's former defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, met with the BOZ director in early 2024, he said delays drawing up plans had put construction work six months behind schedule, according to a video posted by the ministry on its Telegram channel.
Shoigu did not say what kind of construction was affected or when it would be completed. The ministry did not comment.
The satellite images reviewed by Reuters show a flurry of activity in recent months, including tunnels being covered up, berms built and the laying of pipelines. The factory parking lot was extended by around 2,500 square meters and was full in every image, Reuters found.
The person close to the project said initial deadlines were unrealistic and had to be pushed back. He did not elaborate. But he described a big push since last summer to finish the project, saying specialists and “all kinds of big cheeses” had been brought in.
There were so many people working at the site that long lines formed at the gates to get through security checks, he added. ($1 = 81.9000 roubles)