Ukraine plant builds 6-person bunkers for front line

Kryvyi Rih, March 4

The pops of welding torches and the piecing whine of angle grinders fill the spacious production floor at a steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, the city in central Ukraine that is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ‘s hometown.

Instead of doing their usual jobs producing and repairing mining equipment, some workers are busy building metal bunkers for front-line troops. Ukrainian mining and metals company Metinvest launched the project, and the plant workers say they are happy contributing to the resistance to Russia’s invasion.

For now, that means assembling prefabricated materials into underground shelters using a Soviet-era design. They have already shipped 123 of the 2-metre (6 1/2-foot) -wide, 6-metre (20-foot) -long structures structures to areas that include eastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk provinces.

Each shelter requires nearly 2 tons of steel. The bunkers are built to withstand projectiles with calibers of up to 152 millimetres, can accommodate up to six soldiers and need to be buried 1.5 metres (about 5 feet) underground. — AP