Metro-2 in Moscow, Russia, is the informal name for a purported secret underground metro system which parallels the public Moscow Metro. The system was supposedly built, or at least started, during the time of Stalin and was codenamed D-6 by the KGB. It is supposedly still operated by the Presidential General Directorate of Special Programmes (ru) and Ministry of Defence.[1][2][3] The length of Metro-2 is rumored to exceed that of the public Metro. It is said to have four lines, and to lie 50 to 200m deep. It is said to connect the Kremlin with the FSB headquarters, the government airport at Vnukovo-2, and an underground town at Ramenki, in addition to other locations of national importance. In 1994, the leader of an urban exploration group, the Diggers of the Underground Planet, claimed to have found an entrance to this underground system.[4] The Metro-2 rumors have been dismissed by one source as "a parody excursion by public transport into the murky world of 'intelligence'".[5] This source describes virtually all available information as "speculative, unsupported by documentation such as photographs. There are narratives told by people who said they helped build Metro-2, and urban spelunkers claim to have 'seen' Metro-2, but there are no explicit 'firsthand' accounts."[5]

Ramenki bunker Rumour has it that Moscow's biggest underground bunker is located some 10 km from the city centre, in the Ramenki neighbourhood, not far from the main building of the Moscow State University. In the early 1990s, a Soviet newspaper quoted an anonymous KGB officer who claimed to have taken part in the construction of the Ramenki bunker, describing it as a fully functional underground city with an area of about 2 sq. km. Allegedly, the construction of the bunker began in the late 1960s and was completed in the mid-1970s. The underground city was said to accommodate up to 15,000 people at the depth of between 180 and 200 metres and was connected by underground metro tunnels to the Kremlin and other key buildings. The bunker reportedly had food supplies for 30 years and entertainment facilities, including movie theatres. The Ramenki bunker caused some international resonance when a story on it appeared in Time magazine in 1992. Russian officials, however, never admitted the existence of the bunker, nor have they provided any comments. So, it remains unclear whether the bunker actually existed and if so, what is happening there at present. One argument in favour of the idea that the bunker actually exists was information made public about a fire in some underground structures near Prospekt Vernadskogo in December 2002 - no further details were available, however.

Unlike in the U.S., preparations for nuclear conflict during the cold war remain tightly held secrets in Russia, a reflection of the military's continued suspicion of the West. But some information can be pieced together. According to several sources, including former KGB officers, the Kremlin and other key buildings in Moscow are still linked by underground rail tunnels to an area about six miles outside the city center called Ramenki, site of a vast subterranean bunker designed for the country's leaders and their families. ( Responsibility for protection of top Kremlin officials rested with the KGB's Ninth Directorate, which delegated tasks to the Defense Ministry. A KGB officer who claimed to have taken part in constructing the Ramenki bunker described it to a Soviet newspaper last year as an underground city about 500 acres in size, built at several levels ranging in depth from 230 ft. to 395 ft. He said the bunker was begun in the second half of the 1960s and completed by the mid-'70s, could shelter as many as 120,000 people, and included food supplies that could last up to 30 years. Quarters for top leaders were comfortably appointed, and movie theaters were built for entertainment. Some 30 miles outside Moscow in Sofrino, an underground broadcast-communications installation built during Nikita Khrushchev's tenure is now outdated and inoperative, according to Igor Malashenko, deputy director of state television and radio. "Because we don't need it anymore, it's been slowly stripped of spare parts," he says. A similar fate befell many of the tens of thousands of civilian bomb shelters built as part of the massive Soviet civil defense program. At a shelter 40 ft. below the main building of Moscow State University, water has flooded some of the rooms, and thieves have stripped the three-tiered bunks of more than half the wooden plank beds, leaving only useless steel frames. Read more: www.time.com...