UVB-76: The Russian Radio Station That Never Stops Buzzing

2026-06-22 · Signals & Sounds · 2 min read

Tune a shortwave receiver to 4625 kHz and you will hear it: a harsh, rasping buzz, repeating roughly twenty-five times a minute, every hour of every day. Radio hobbyists around the world call the station "The Buzzer." It has been droning from Russia for more than four decades, and to this day no government has ever officially said what it is for.

Monitors first noticed a signal on the frequency in the late 1970s, and the earliest confirmed recordings date to 1982. In its early years the station transmitted a simpler repeating pip; around 1990 it switched to the now-famous buzz. Crucially, the tone is not a recording on a loop — listeners have caught distant conversations and shuffling sounds bleeding into the transmission, proof that a live, open microphone sits in front of the sound source in a staffed room.

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