The Soviets designed this Ukrainian steelworks with war in mind, with food and water storage, generators, restrooms, mattress stacks, and even wood-burning stoves in deep subterranean bunkers.

        The Zaporizhstal factory, a sister company to the Azovstal mill, which is the final redoubt of Ukrainian forces in the port city of Mariupol, demonstrates how these Stalin-era installations are constructed to withstand Russian invasion.

        As molten metal streamed and flared behind him, Zaporizhstal employee Ihor Buhlayev, 20, stated in his hooded silver safety gear, "We can stay in the shelters for a long time." "I believe it will give us a fighting chance." Although Buhlayev's job in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia was spared from Russia's onslaught, the facility was forced to shut down operations as the front grew perilously close.

        The bunkers under the massive Azovstal and Zaporizhstal factories were constructed in the early 1930s, when the world was recovering from one war and preparing for the next, and they are designed to house thousands of people. Metinvest Holding, which is controlled by Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov, owns both factories.

        The Zaporizhstal plant has 16 bunkers, one of which AFP visited was around 10 meters down and secured by a 10-centimetre-thick blast door. The 600-person capacity is claimed for the large, well illuminated chamber with rows of wooden seats. Toilets are flushed with water from tanks, emergency food and bottled water are stored in a storage room, and firewood is stacked chest-high for the oil barrel-sized metal stove.


A DIFFERENT KIND OF WAR

        Hundreds of people were concealed in the bunkers beneath Azovstal, many of whom were rescued by international troops, and they continue to be a safe haven for holdout forces battling Russian control of Mariupol. "God forbid we wind ourselves in a scenario like our Azovstal colleagues, metalworkers like us, who ended up staying in the shelter for so long... That is something I would never want on anyone "Inside the bunker, communications department chief Alexander Lotenkov remarked.

        The about 5.5-square-kilometer facility above that shelter has about half the size of Azovstal but is still large, and the only effective method to traverse between its components is aboard a vehicle with wheels. The sheer amount of hiding spots among the complex's rows of buildings and tunnels beneath the site, as well as observation points from its lofty towers, is one thing.

        However, conflict has not been helpful for business in this situation. Reduced operations have been up and running since the beginning of April, when the Russians were forced to retire from regions near Kyiv due to intense Ukrainian opposition. The United States said this week that tariffs on steel produced in Ukraine will be suspended, but the situation remains grim.

        According to American officials that imposed the 25% protective tariff, Ukraine accounts for only around 1% of US steel imports, and logistics is a huge barrier for Ukrainian exporters, with the typical shipping routes disrupted by the conflict. 

        "We won't be able to compete with other companies since their logistic costs are cheaper, and we need to move our output from Zaporizhzhia to Poland now in order to ship to the United States," the site's general director Alexander Mironenko told AFP.

        Steel exports have plummeted to a quarter of their pre-war levels, and the Ukrainian economy will rely on getting back up to speed and into the market. "It was one of Ukraine's key export-oriented businesses, and the metallurgical and mining sectors of Ukraine earned roughly 50% of foreign currency income," Mironenko stated.