{"id":3679,"date":"2021-07-19T20:23:59","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T20:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mediateka.online\/learnrussian\/we-still-havent-ruled-out-aliens-after-journalists-find-an-abandoned-private-prison-outside-st-petersburg-its-promptly-bulldozed-shut.html"},"modified":"2021-07-19T20:23:59","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T20:24:08","slug":"we-still-havent-ruled-out-aliens-after-journalists-find-an-abandoned-private-prison-outside-st-petersburg-its-promptly-bulldozed-shut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mediateka.online\/learnrussian\/we-still-havent-ruled-out-aliens-after-journalists-find-an-abandoned-private-prison-outside-st-petersburg-its-promptly-bulldozed-shut.html","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We still haven\u2019t ruled out aliens\u2019 After journalists find an abandoned private prison outside St. Petersburg, it\u2019s promptly bulldozed shut"},"content":{"rendered":"
Satellite image of a building containing an underground secret prison outside St. PetersburgGoogle Earth Pro<\/figure>\n

A strange facility now lies in ruins outside St. Petersburg. Until bulldozers arrived on Monday, July 19, a compound 44 kilometers (27 miles) from the city concealed an abandoned private prison with three cells, a guard station, and a furnace that may have served as a crematorium. Viktor Smirnov and Andrey Karov, two local journalists from 47news, say they learned about the site through a tip \u201cfrom some migrant worker.\u201d\u00a0Meduza summarizes what they found underground.<\/p>\n

Surrounded by a mostly collapsed fence, the two-story building Smirnov and Karov found had what appeared to be a garage opening that once contained a powerful hydraulics system used to raise and lower a heavy concrete slab. The compound\u2019s gates were decorated with drawings of a wolf, a spider, a woman behind bars, and skull and crossbones with the inscription \u201cManonera\u201d (a type of Italian extortion racket). Above the entrance, there was a sign that read \u201cCopenhagen.\u201d<\/p>\n