Workers weld bunkers at the Metinvest plant in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, March 2, 2023. (Photo: AP)
The hissing of welders and the clatter of grinders fill the spacious production area at a steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, a city in central Ukraine that is President Volodymyr Zelensky's hometown.
Instead of their usual jobs manufacturing and repairing mining equipment, some workers are busy building metal bunkers for troops on the front lines. The Ukrainian mining and metals company Metinvest started the project, and factory workers say they are happy to be helping to fend off the Russian offensive.
Now, their effort involves assembling prefabricated underground shelters based on Soviet-era designs. Workers have delivered 123 bunkers measuring 2 meters wide and 6 meters long to frontline areas in the eastern provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk.
Each such bunker requires nearly 2 tons of steel. The bunkers are built to withstand bullets up to 152 mm caliber, can accommodate up to 6 soldiers and need to be buried 1.5 meters underground.
“This structure allows soldiers to rest and avoid attacks,” said Petro Zhuk, who oversees the 40-man team building the bunkers. Although each shelter takes 165 man-hours to produce, including prefabrication, Zhuk said his team can produce one a day.
The bunker’s six beds are made of wood. Zhuk explained that the shelter also has a place for a portable kitchen, a “mezzanine” that can be used to store weapons, and an exit to the surface, along with a tunnel entrance.
Metal bunker that can accommodate six people, manufactured by Metinvest. (Photo: AP)
Mr Zhuk said he hoped the Ukrainian soldiers would find some comfortable protection inside the bunker.
“When they are in there, they no longer worry about an attack that might happen while they are sleeping,” Zhuk said. “They can feel warm and comfortable.”
Metinvest also owns the Azovstal Iron and Steel Plant, which served as a symbolic bastion of Ukrainian resistance in the port city of Mariupol, now destroyed and under Russian control. During the months of the siege of Mariupol, civilians and soldiers who had taken refuge there held out to defend the plant until they were ordered to surrender.
In an interview with Ukrainian media, Metinvest CEO Yurii Ryzhenkov said the bunker drawings were dug out of the company’s archives, which date back to when it was a Soviet enterprise. Back then, he said, every factory had to produce something for the military.
Vitalii Yevzhenko, 54, a factory worker who helped assemble the bunker, said he thought what he and his colleagues were doing was important. “This is for the victory of Ukraine. The sooner the conflict ends, the better,” he said.
The bunkers are essential as fighting continues in eastern and southern Ukraine, especially in the Bakhmut hotspot. On March 7, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Russian army would have an "open path" to seize Ukrainian cities if they took control of Bakhmut. "This is a tactic for us, we understand that after Bakhmut they can go further."
Ukrainian soldiers have to fight in extremely difficult conditions on the front line. (Photo: AP)
The Ukrainian leader said he had discussed the Bakhmut issue with the chief of the general staff and the army commander, both of whom supported "continuing the resistance operation" in the city.
This information was released in the context of some sources saying that Ukrainian officials have calculated the possibility of withdrawing from Bakhmut in case the losses are too great compared to the benefits gained.
(Source: Tin Tuc Newspaper)
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