The Kyiv Metro: The World's Biggest Bomb Shelter
An homage to the subway system that continues to serve its people in these horrific times
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has started…
All talks of a peaceful solution have broken down. The Russian army is swiftly moving in from all directions with the goal of obliterating all Ukrainian resistance.
In Kyiv, millions of citizens are fearing for their life, and for the ones who haven’t been able to flee, there is little escape from the incoming Russian missiles.
On Thursday Feb. 24, Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, imposed a curfew and ordered all public transit to be halted so that the metro stations could be used as bomb shelters against the incoming air raids.
Turns out that Kyiv’s metro system was built to serve this very purpose.
Completed in the 1960s, when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, it includes stations built deep underground. This was so that it could double as bomb shelters in the event of an enemy attack.
In fact, the Kyiv metro station Arsenalna is the deepest in the world, located 106 meters below ground.
First conceived in 1884 when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire, the Kyiv subway system is a feat of engineering and architecture.
Its stations are decorated with marble archways, beautiful mosaics, and decorative chandeliers to be a pride to its citizens.
However, the stations, especially those in the city center, are reinforced with concrete and steal beams to withstand even nuclear blasts, as they were conceived during the Cold War, when nuclear warfare was an ever-present danger.
Over the years, the metro system has expanded to a total of 52 stations, or a total track length of 67 km. Before the pandemic, the system had a daily ridership of over 1.3 million. Even though not all stations can be used as bomb shelters, a majority can, which gives the system an enormous capacity to shelter people.
So, in April 2021, amidst escalating threats from Russia at Ukraine’s eastern border, Kyiv’s government decided to release a map of nearly 3,000 designated bomb shelters, with 47 of the city’s 52 subway stations included.
The protection from the Kyiv Metro is a small comfort in one of the most testing times in history for the Ukrainian people, but hopefully it can function the way it was designed: To serve and protect its people.