Ukraine plant builds 6-person bunkers for war’s front lines

KRYVYI RIH, Ukraine –

The pops of welding torches and the piercing whine of angle grinders fill the spacious manufacturing flooring at a metal plant in Kryvyi Rih, town in central Ukraine that’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ‘s hometown.

Instead of doing their traditional jobs producing and repairing mining tools, some staff are busy constructing metallic bunkers for front-line troops. Ukrainian mining and metals firm Metinvest launched the mission, and the plant staff say they’re blissful contributing to the resistance to Russia’s invasion.

For now, meaning assembling prefabricated supplies into underground shelters utilizing a Soviet-era design. They have already shipped 123 of the 2-metre (6 1/2-foot) -wide, 6-metre (20-foot) -long buildings buildings to areas that embrace japanese Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk provinces.

Each shelter requires almost 2 tons of metal. The bunkers are constructed to resist projectiles with calibers of as much as 152 millimetres, can accommodate as much as six troopers and should be buried 1.5 metres (about 5 toes) underground.

“This is so they can rest, sit out the attacks,” stated Petro Zhuk, who manages the 40-person workforce constructing the shelters. Although the buildings take 165 man-hours to provide together with the prefabrication, his workforce can construct one a day, Zhuk stated.

The six beds inside are fabricated from wooden. The shelter additionally comes with a spot to place a conveyable range, a double flooring that can be utilized to retailer weapons and an exit resulting in the floor together with an entrance reached by tunnel, he defined.

Zhuk speaks compassionately of the Ukrainian troops he hopes will discover a measure of consolation within the bunkers.

“While they are inside, they cannot worry about an attack that could happen while they are asleep,” he stated. “They can be warm and comfortable.”

Metinvest additionally owns the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, a fortress-like plant within the destroyed and now occupied metropolis of Mariupol. During the months Mariupol was underneath siege, civilians and troopers sheltered there, and the last-ditch stand Ukrainian forces made to defend the plant turned an emblem of resistance towards Moscow’s invasion.

In an interview with Ukrainian media, Metinvest CEO Yurii Ryzhenkov stated the drawings for the bunkers have been discovered within the firm’s archives, relationship from when it was a Soviet enterprise. Back then, each plant needed to produce one thing for the military, he stated.

Vitalii Yevzhenko, 54, a plant employee concerned in assembling the bunkers, stated he thinks what he and his colleagues are doing is essential.

“This is for the victory of Ukraine. The sooner the war ends, the better it will be,” he stated.