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

By HANNA ARHIROVA
Associated Press

KRYVYI RIH, Ukraine (AP) — The pops of welding torches and the piercing whine of angle grinders fill the spacious production floor at a steel plant in central Ukraine. Instead of producing and repairing mining equipment, a team of workers is busy building metal bunkers for front-line troops. The team is assembling prefabricated materials into underground shelters with a Soviet-era design. They have already shipped 123 of the 2-meter (6 1/2-foot) -wide, 6-meter-long (20-foot) -long structures to areas that include eastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk provinces. The bunkers need to be buried 1.5 meters (about 5 feet) underground and can accommodate up to six soldiers. “This is so they can rest, sit out the attacks,” says the production team’s manager.