Ukraine: in Kryvyï Rih, the fallout shelter against nuclear threats
Audio 01:17
Serhii Milyutin, deputy mayor of Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, in a fallout shelter in the city.
© Boris Vichith / RFI
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
To the north of the Kherson front, Kryvyi Rih is one of the rear bases of the Ukrainian soldiers who are leading the counter-offensive to retake the areas still in Russian hands.
Relatively spared from the fighting, the city was repeatedly targeted by Russian fire.
Added to this are the Russian nuclear threats.
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With our special correspondents in Kryvyi Rih,
Anastasia Becchio
and
Boris Vichith
Last month, the bombing of a hydroelectric dam caused great damage in the surrounding area.
But in Kryvyi Rih, a town in southern Ukraine, located not far from the Kherson front, the threat of a Russian nuclear attack is also taken very seriously.
One thousand square meters of surface under two meters of earth and three and a half meters of concrete;
the fallout shelter built in the middle of the Cold War has resumed service 60 decades later, says deputy mayor Serhii Milioutine, descending the large concrete staircase.
Inside, dozens of benches with blankets, food and water supplies, generators, wifi and medicine.
“
In the event of a nuclear attack, people will be able to take refuge here and we will give them these iodine tablets.
One tablet per person for 24 hours
,” explains Serhii Milioutine.
With 685,000 inhabitants, including those displaced from Kherson and elsewhere, the city of Kryvyi Rih has opened more than 300 shelters.
Not all of them are fallout shelters.
The city authorities are preparing for any eventuality.
We have been preparing for the possibility of a nuclear threat, not since the Russians started spouting false information about a dirty bomb, but for more than eight months, because we are a hundred kilometers from the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
And when we see what the Russians are doing there, with the shooting and everything else, we understand that there is a threat.
This is why we started to prepare.
The shelter is also used to host concerts and theater rehearsals.
Next month, the inhabitants will be able to follow the broadcasts of the Football World Cup there.
In the fallout shelter, pallets act as beds.
Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine.
© Boris Vichith / RFI
►Read also: War in Ukraine: in the Mykolaiv region, with an officer of the 63rd brigade
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