The mystery of Ukraine’s Azovstal ‘fortress’: The labyrinth of tunnels

Satellite image shows the condition of the factory Maxar Technologies

Built nearly 90 years ago, the Azovstal factory started operating in 1933, the time when Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union, before being interrupted because of World War II. After the war ended, this place was rebuilt and expanded into a complex spanning an area of ​​​​about 11 km². Below is a maze of tunnels stretching 24 km.

Fortress inside the city

Before Russia launched the campaign military especially in Ukraine since February 24, Azovstal is one of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe. For decades, this place played a key role in supplying raw materials for the Soviet railway system and shipbuilding. It was privatized in the 1990s after Ukraine’s independence.

A factory smelter afp/getty

The huge complex of warehouses, railroad tracks and industrial workshops stretched along the coast of the regional port city of Mariupol and by the river Karmius. Before the Russian army arrived, the factory had more than 10,000 employees and had a capacity of 4.3 million tons of steel per year.

“The factory is a veritable labyrinth, with many buildings built of thick concrete and designed to endure temperature tall”, according to the newspaper The New York Times. Below is a network of tunnels and bunkers.

Artem Papu Gennadievich, 35, worked at the Azovstal factory for 14 years before the war broke out. The Metinvest Group, the owner of the factory, has prepared everything necessary such as beds, tables and chairs, toilets inside the bunkers and tunnels. There is enough food and water to feed about 4,000 people for 3 weeks.

“Inside there are food, ventilation facilities, lights, heat-resistant doors are fully installed,” he said. “Every factory has a network of tunnels like this, with maps to guide you in case you get lost,” Gennadievich said.

The fortress is easy to defend and difficult to attack

Evacuees described the network of tunnels beneath the factory as truly a giant labyrinth. “Like a big city”, but too dark and confusing to move around normally. “You can’t see ahead, so you just have to stay in the places you’re familiar with,” said 14-year-old Maiia Krylova, 14-year-old girl, who followed her mother to evacuate this place in early May.

Simulation of the tunnel system underneath the factory Taken from Daily Mail

The network of tunnels and bunkers beneath the plant was built during the Cold War, providing protection for some 40,000 people in the event of a nuclear attack. The original tunnels were said to be nearly impossible to penetrate with bombs, at least at the time of construction. However, the reality shows that many areas were destroyed because of the new generation of Russian bombs.

“Azovstal has up to six basements, an area the size of Vilnius (Lithuania capital),” CNN quoted retired military analyst as Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, formerly the commander of the US Army in Europe.

“It’s a huge underground city with a lot of resistance to outside attack,” General Hertling said. This is also where the last Ukrainian units are entrenched under pressure from the Russian army.

The extensive tunnel system allows the entrenched units here to apply guerrilla warfare. At one point, this place housed about 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers, mainly the 36th Marine Brigade and the Azov Battalion, a military unit of the Ukrainian National Guard.

Azovstal factory is still standing after 3 months of war AFP

“The Azovstal factory has a huge space with too many buildings, which means the Russians…hard to detect [lực lượng Ukraine],” Kyiv-based military analyst Oleh Zhdanov told Reuters. Satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies on May 12 show widespread destruction of the Azovstal plant. It is not clear how much impact Russian bombs have on the tunnel system below.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is trying to evacuate wounded soldiers from the factory. An estimated 500 Ukrainian soldiers need medical evacuation. However, up to now, the units inside the Azovstal factory have not shown any signs of surrender.