Large property company in Kyiv creates ‘Hedgehogs’

Ukrainian civilians team up with KAN real estate developer to create metal anti-tank barricades to support troops against Russia’s advance

As Russian troops close in on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, a muddy construction site in a local neighbourhood is teeming with workers and welders.

But instead of homes and offices, the KAN real estate developer is now making giant metal anti-tank barricades known as “hedgehogs”.

Smaller spiked barriers aimed at stopping wheeled vehicles.

Yet another example of how Ukrainian civilians are supporting regular troops as they try to repel Russia’s advance.

Advisor to Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschoko, Dmytro Bilotserkovets, says “We are now in the center of one of the biggest development companies in the city,”

“Because of the wartime they changed their activity and they help our city to make the anti-tank hedgehogs,”

he says.

After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, in what Moscow calls a “special operation”, Zakhar Povydysh, a foreman, started calling the company’s construction workers who remained in the capital.

He says almost everyone volunteered to stay and contribute.

“On the first day, once Russia treacherously attacked Ukraine when they started crossing our borders, when the nearby cities went up in flames, blood in all of us, Ukrainians, began to boil. We understood that we as builders did not know how to fight, but we could be useful.”

he says.

Workers salvaged reinforcing bars and girders from construction sites to produce spiked and movable defences against wheeled vehicles like tanks.

So far, the makeshift factory, which started operating last week, has produced 110 large hedgehogs, according to the company’s deputy director.

He added that the company runs other similar sites in the city.

On February 25, Kyiv’s mayor and boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, said the city “has gone into defensive phase”.

His deputy Andriy Kryschenko said tens of thousands of people in the capital had received weapons and many more were waiting at enlistment and recruitment offices.

Serhiy Serdyuk, a welder in his fifties working at the KAN makeshift factory, says he is ready to join the fight.

“We will break the spine of the Russian army. We have already broken it. We have cracked it and we will break it.”

he says.

Savannah Pocock contributed to this article