Molniya () was an explosive device used to

booby trap A booby trap is a device or setup that is intended to kill, harm or surprise a human or an animal. It is triggered by the presence or actions of the victim and sometimes has some form of bait designed to lure the victim towards it. The trap may b ...

certain buried or otherwise concealed containers used by the

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

to cache items, such as

shortwave radio Shortwave radio is radio transmission using radio frequencies in the shortwave bands (SW). There is no official definition of the band range, but it always includes all of the High frequency, high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30& ...

receivers,

cryptographic Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More gen ...

materials, and allegedly even

suitcase nuclear device A suitcase nuclear device (also suitcase nuke, suitcase bomb, backpack nuke, snuke, mini-nuke, and pocket nuke) is a tactical nuclear weapon that is portable enough that it could use a suitcase as its delivery method. During the 1950s and 1960s ...

s. A sequence of specific actions had to be undertaken in the correct order to render the device safe prior to moving or opening the container, or the device would automatically

detonate Detonation () is a type of combustion involving a supersonic exothermic front accelerating through a medium that eventually drives a shock front propagating directly in front of it. Detonations propagate supersonically through shock waves wit ...

. This detonation was designed to be lethal to anyone in its immediate proximity, as well as being sufficient to destroy all materials in the cache. From at least 1955 to the 1970s, such caches were allegedly pre-positioned in many countries — including locations in the United States and Switzerland — for planned terrorist and

sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...

acts during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

. At least some were booby-trapped with "Molniya." One such cache, identified by KGB defector

Vasili Mitrokhin Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin (; March 3, 1922 – January 23, 2004) was an archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1992. Mitrokhin first offer ...

, exploded when Swiss authorities fired upon it using a

water cannon A water cannon is a device that shoots a high-velocity stream of water. Typically, a water cannon can deliver a large volume of water, often over dozens of meters. They are used in firefighting, large vehicle washing, riot control, and mining. ...

. The device was found in the woods near

Belfaux Belfaux (; , locally ) is a municipality in the district of Sarine in the canton of Fribourg in Switzerland. Its former German name was ''Gumschen'', but this is no longer in use. History Belfaux is first mentioned in the 12th century as ''Be ...

. Although the explosion resulted in no casualties, the Swiss federal prosecutor at the time remarked, "Anyone who tried to move the KGB container uncovered in December of 1998 would have been killed."House Armed Services Committee No. 106-32, "Russian Threat Perceptions and Plans for Sabotage Against the United States", 26OCT1999.
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References

{{reflist Soviet inventions Weapons of the Soviet Union KGB Area denial weapons

See also

References