Alsu Crimea bunker object 221. Object “221” is an abandoned Black Sea Fleet ZCP near Sevastopol. The history of the appearance of a military place in Crimea

Object 221 is another ghost of the Cold War, another “Crimean military wonder of the world,” striking in its scale and uselessness today.
Object 221 (other names - "Alsu", object "Nora", height 495) - once a top-secret underground city capable of withstanding a nuclear war, which was built as a reserve command post for the command of the USSR Black Sea Fleet. Rumor has it that in addition to the transfer of command of the fleet, facility 221 was also intended to serve as a refuge for high-ranking officials. In short, “if there is war tomorrow,” so that there is somewhere to evacuate the party leadership and the “cream of society” vacationing in Crimea.
But this place never became an elite bunker, turning into a corpse in 1992.

It would be more correct to call Object 221 not an underground city. After all, all its tunnels and walls are carved into solid rock.
The selected “Height 495,” according to geological exploration, had a monolithic rock structure, without any faults or cavities. According to the project, the height of the rock “roof” above the premises was 180 meters. The “roof” was pierced by two shafts with a diameter of 4.5 meters. Some tourists even mistake them for rockets.
The underground city had three levels, connected by long tunnels and walls through which a car could drive (I will show the diagram below). Only the supply walls from one of the two entrances to Object 221 were more than 500 meters long (after all, this is an object of the highest antinuclear protection class). The total length of the tunnels and tunnels is more than 10 (!!!) km.
It seems incredible, but such a large-scale construction was carried out almost unnoticed. A special “underground” construction battalion was formed, reinforced by specialists who had experience in constructing concrete silos for ballistic missiles. Nearby, at the foot of Mount Gasforta, a crushed stone plant was built, where the rock removed from the mountain was transported at night. The enemy satellites in their picture should have seen only an ordinary crushed stone mining plant and civilian buildings working for the benefit of Soviet citizens...

2. Object 221 from the air. Externally - nothing special.

3. In many sources, this building is called a hotel or hostel for those who built the Object. But if you carefully examine the structure from the inside, serious doubts arise in this assumption. Most likely, this is a decoy building for enemy satellites. Note the very close windows. On the reverse side there is a balcony slab under each of them, but there are no exits to the balcony.

4. To check the assumption, we climb the crumbling steps to the “main entrance”

5. Building "Dorms inside". The ceilings all had time to crumble, unlike the load-bearing columns and walls. Amazing, isn't it? As is the surprising complete absence of flights of stairs and even the stairwells themselves.

6. True, there are some household items here..

7. Concrete remains literally play in the wind and bend underfoot, so we leave here and begin the climb to one of the two entrances of Object 221

8. In total, the ZKP has two entrances disguised as civilian buildings - western and eastern. We decide to enter through the eastern one and, after passing through the underground tunnels, exit through the western one.

9. Entrances are disguised as ordinary buildings. In fact, the painted windows look too fake and funny. But, apparently, someone thought that this could confuse the enemy.

10. If you look at the blende from the side, you can see that it is generally just a concrete slab.

11. Entering the womb of a stillborn monster

12. There are warning signs on the walls. I am walking without a helmet, gas mask, protective equipment and boots. I'm wearing only my trusty Timberlands.

13. Guardrooms at the entrance.

14. This is the beginning of a tunnel that goes deep into the rock. In plan, the underground headquarters center resembled a huge letter "A". It communicated with the world through two diverging walls, which were blocked at the entrances by massive anti-nuclear doors with airlock chambers.

15. By the beginning of the 90s, Object 221 was almost completed. Most of the communications were installed, pipes and cables were laid. The project did not provide for elevators. The command post personnel had to climb to a 180-meter height on foot. In front of each of the two portals, multi-ton reinforced concrete structures were built, inside which electrical cables, air ducts, water and sewer pipes ran.
Now all the metal on the site has been cut out.

16. Eastern tunnel. In order to carry out the unthinkable fortification task, a special mining battalion was formed. To help its fighters, units of the Donetskshakhtprohodka trust, which had extensive experience in constructing concrete silos for ballistic missiles, were assigned. In the first year alone, two 182-meter shafts were drilled, from the bottom of which the mountains of the adits of the main shelter began to spread out.

17. The width and height of the tunnels are enough for a military truck to pass through

18. Scheme of Object 221.

19. After 500 meters, the tunnels begin to branch, connecting blocks and various rooms.

20. At the farthest end of the first level tunnel, visibility is almost zero. Water dust literally hangs in the air, and it is almost impossible to shoot. We are deep inside the rock. On this August day it was almost 40 degrees outside, and in the tunnels it was about 7. Because of this difference in temperature, something like fog forms. I'll have to try going here in winter. Maybe then it will be possible to take pictures deep inside the object.

21. Well, just so you understand, it’s pitch dark here. I took this photo specifically to make it clear what the hanging water dust looks like. She is clearly visible here in the beam of light from the lantern

22. Coming out of the western entrance, we climb along the long road to the very top of height 495 - to the roof of the facility.

23. The height of the rock “roof” above the premises is about 180 meters. The “roof” is pierced by two shafts with a diameter of 4.5 meters. Some tourists mistake them for rocket launchers. In fact, through these shafts the underground command post communicated with the antenna field. Cables, air ducts and spiral staircases led up to the top.

24. One of the ventilation shafts.

25. View from the “roof” of Object 221. At the bottom right you can see the same crushed stone plant, now also abandoned.

In 1991, Ukraine announced its nuclear-free status and the protected command post was no longer needed. But money for the construction of “Object 221” had already been included in the 1991 budget, and therefore construction continued. In 1992, funding was stopped and the facility was mothballed.
From 1992 to 1998, they tried to find a peaceful use for this bunker. They wanted to locate a bottling plant for mineral water or alcoholic beverages in Alsou. In particular, sound opinions were expressed about the prospects of repurposing “Object 221” into a winery. But, apparently, small kickbacks were offered.
There are legends among local residents that in the mid-90s, the dungeons of the facility were used for training by fighters of the organized crime group E. Podaneva.
To date, all the metal has been cut out and removed from the site, and it itself is slowly dying inside the once solid rock mass..

Few people know that in addition to the submarine repair plant, which was classified during the Soviet Union, not far from Sevastopol there is another once-secret facility that amazes with its gigantic size - this is “Object 221”, “Nora”, height 495, a stone or salt quarry... This structure, built on one of the hills in the area of the Alsu tract, was called differently. But behind all these names lies the Reserve Command Post of the USSR Black Sea Fleet. According to its purpose, it should be a reserve only in peacetime. If war had happened, it would be from here that the ships and formations of the Black Sea Fleet would be commanded.

A top-secret underground city could survive a nuclear explosion. He could not stand the post-Soviet devastation.

If you turn slightly to the side from the “government” highway Sevastopol-Yalta, you will come to the village of Morozovka. There is no further passage. The highway leading up is crossed by an “obstacle course” four meters wide: someone spared no effort in digging up and filling up this section of the road with stones. There is also a country road that leads out to the same highway - this way you can bypass the emergency section - but it is crossed out by a barrier with a solid lock.

Anyone who spares no effort and goes on foot along the mysterious highway will, in twenty to thirty minutes, stumble upon the remains of something colossal in scale. “Object 221”.

Twenty years ago, such “pedestrians” were politely stopped on the approach to Morozovka. They would ask who they are and what they are going to do. Then they would have escorted me out just as politely. And if someone dared to ask local residents why convoys of trucks so often rush along the highway and where they are heading, they would receive an evasive answer: “There is a stone quarry here.” By the way, that’s what it was ordered to call “Object-221” even to those who created it. All we know now is that they began to build a command post, an entire underground city, in 1977. It was planned to house the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet and service personnel. There is information that in the event of the outbreak of war, high-ranking officials were to be stationed here, vacationing at the dachas of the South Coast and in the vicinity of Sevastopol. “Object 221” goes almost 200 meters deep, has four underground floors, and two main entrances. At the top, in the mountain itself, ventilation shafts are hidden. The total area is 17.5 thousand square meters, this is the largest underground structure in Crimea.

It seems incredible, but such a large-scale construction was carried out almost unnoticed. A special “underground” construction battalion was formed, reinforced by specialists who had experience in constructing concrete silos for ballistic missiles. In just one year, two 192-meter trunks were drilled, from the bottom of which the adits of the main shelter went into the vastness of the mountains.

Even after 1991, construction of the facility continued, though only because the budget for 1992 had already been approved and money had been allocated. In 1992, the facility was mothballed. The degree of readiness is about 90(!!!) percent. All that remained was to carry out the finishing work and install the necessary equipment. All mining (the most difficult) work was completed, communications were installed. But Ukraine did not need such a facility. Yes, and too tough, to be honest. Until 1998, the object was at least guarded and attempts were made to find peaceful uses for it. There were proposals to establish a winery there. But then the security was removed. And the robbery began...

Closer to the top, the road surface bulges with cracks. For several years in a row, small landslides have been occurring here, perhaps due to the fault of an “object” hidden in the underground depths.

There is such a rather touristic place - Sapun Mountain. There is an observation deck on it. From there you can see that among the forest on a slope of the same height there is a pair of two-story houses. But if you come closer, it turns out that this is not exactly home. And the windows are completely painted on them...

Man-made entrance. Locals say that this wall was undermined specifically to make it easier to pull long metal structures out of the bunker.

Inside view

Welcome to Reserve command post.

This is the very first room you encounter when entering the tunnel. ZKP. Also something like a guardhouse. With safes built into the walls...

A truck passes through this tunnel quite calmly. And two cars will completely separate when they meet. Above the bunker there is 180 meters of rock. Height 495, chosen as the site for construction, according to georeconnaissance data, had a monolithic rock structure, without any faults or cavities. Two almost 200-meter vertical trunks, each with a diameter of about 5 meters, lead to the top of the hill, where the antenna field is located. They contained communications and spiral staircases. No elevators, it’s safer...

In the bunker there are often such dead-end branches. The military claims that they are designed to dampen the shock wave in the event of an attempt to blow up the entrances.

Pathetic pieces of wires are all that remains of the communications that were laid throughout the territory “Object 221”. Along the walls of the tunnels there were shelves on which cables could lie in ten tiers. Five cables with a diameter of 60 mm on each tier. They say that the cables were torn out very simply: they were tied to a tractor and pulled out as much as could be pulled out...

At the end of this corridor is the “attic” of the structure. There is even more impressive destruction...

There was a lot of metal here during construction. So much that it is still exported. The colored one was pulled out all in just a year since the security was lifted. But the black one is still there.

Here it is - the attic. Down are three more floors of the main premises. The ceiling, walls, partitions - everything from the inside is lined with iron sheets. More precisely, not even that. After the caves for the bunker were cut, they began to build it (the bunker) inside the cave. The walls are special reinforced concrete blocks. First, a cube was made from iron sheets into which fittings with a diameter of 5 centimeters were inserted. All this was poured with concrete and welded on top with an iron sheet. And these blocks were already put together and welded with a hermetically sealed seam! And the space between the walls of the bunker and the wall of the cut cave was also filled with concrete...

This gap was once a staircase. The steps were cut off because they were metal.

These corridors are already on the lower level. All doors, hatches, covers have long been cut off. The floor is covered with welding electrodes. And on the surface you can easily find empty cylinders from gas “burners”..

In the territory “Object 221” there should have been a satellite communications center, an information and computing center, an autonomous life support system - a power plant, water and fuel tanks, a ventilation and air regeneration system, a kitchen-dining room, and a first-aid post. The internal premises could accommodate hundreds of specialist staff officers, signalmen, service personnel... perhaps even government shelter managers. Foros is not far, and between the exits from the ZKP there is a helipad...

Next to the stairs is a ventilation and communications shaft. This is already a bottom-up view. Everything is cut off. All…

Huge hall on the lower level. He's not the only one there. Various corridors and rooms diverge to the sides. According to various estimates, the total area of the underground premises of the ZKP is from 13 to 17 and a half thousand square meters. This is the largest underground structure in Crimea.
The ZKP consists of three blocks. The first two were to house the main command and control services. The dimensions of each block are: height and width 16 meters, length 130 meters. The third block - technological - is smaller: height 7.5 meters, width 6 meters, length 130 meters.

2. Object 221 from the air. Externally - nothing special.

4. To check the assumption, we climb the crumbling steps to the “main entrance”

6. True, there are some household items here..

7. Concrete remains literally play in the wind and bend underfoot, so we leave here and begin the climb to one of the two entrances of Object 221

9. Entrances are disguised as ordinary buildings. In fact, the painted windows look too fake and funny. But, apparently, someone thought that this could confuse the enemy.

10. If you look at the blende from the side, you can see that it is generally just a concrete slab.

11. Entering the womb of a stillborn monster

12. There are warning signs on the walls. I am walking without a helmet, gas mask, protective equipment and boots. I'm wearing only my trusty Timberlands.

13. Guardrooms at the entrance.

17. The width and height of the tunnels are enough for a military truck to pass through

18. Scheme of Object 221.

19. After 500 meters, the tunnels begin to branch, connecting blocks and various rooms.

22. Coming out of the western entrance, we climb along the long road to the very top of height 495 - to the roof of the facility.

24. One of the ventilation shafts.

25. View from the “roof” of Object 221. At the bottom right you can see the same crushed stone plant, now also abandoned.

My previous photo reports and photo stories:

Hello everyone, well, actually, the time has come for the main thing, a long, rusty, accordion, pop like Alsou, but nevertheless a more than interesting object 221. As they say, it’s a shame to visit the accordion, but it’s doubly shameful not to visit, especially since this is perhaps the most the grandest of the available objects (I took a ticket to Crimea and got there) and no matter how it is littered and spoiled with paint cans by patrolmen, role players, airsoft players, gopotas, natives and others, it will still feel grandeur and power. It’s definitely worth a visit, I recommend it to everyone, it’s a real miracle, or rather the anti-miracle of Crimea.

On the way to the site we see a strange building. In fact, this is a dummy. When object 221 was built there was an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy. It was customary to call it a stone quarry, and the workers who were involved in its construction also called it - they went to develop the stone quarry, that’s all. Well, the dummy building allegedly housed a dormitory for the workers of this very quarry.

Photo 2.

But in fact it was never completed. An empty box that doesn't even have stairs or a roof. The question is, was there a roof? Or it was very rotten, since the building is just a dummy. Just a mystery. Why was it necessary to paint the walls from the inside?

Photo 3.

By the way, the building, despite the lack of a roof, fits perfectly into the landscape, misleading the enemy. As if an ordinary residential building doesn’t even smell like a secret object, nevertheless, we are now on its roof.

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And here is the entrance to secret object 221. From a distance and from a spy satellite, it looks like another ghost residential building. The fake windows are painted on, and the trees surrounding the object do their job, covering the unnecessary from prying eyes

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#Crimeaisour XD

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Entrance and waiting room. Once upon a time there were huge anti-nuclear doors here. However, there is nothing left of them. By the way, they were not all-metal, there was only metal casing, but there was concrete inside, nevertheless, the local natives sawed them down. In general, walking around the facility, you are struck by two things. The first is the power of the super-civilization that built it and the second is the “power” of wild barbarians and natives who sawed it completely, leaving almost not a single piece of metal, except for those places where they simply were not able to tear it off or this It was not at all profitable.

Photo 8.

So, a little history. This was back in the 70s, when everything was far from being as it is sung in the song of the band Lilies of the Valley “the threat of nuclear war doesn’t bother me much” (C), but everything was more than serious, since it was the height of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war was one of the worst nightmares. Therefore, the leadership of the USSR erected various super-secret bunkers, shelters and other secret objects. That’s when, in 1976, they decided to start building a reserve command post, which would house the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in the event of a threat of a nuclear attack. They say that it had to not only withstand a nuclear strike, but also provide complete autonomy for several years for several thousand people. At the same time, ensure uninterrupted command of the surviving remnants after a nuclear strike of the fleet thanks to a powerful communications system that allows transmission to anywhere on the planet.
Construction began in 1977 in the strictest secrecy. The object received the code name 221, but the legend for everyone was that it was just a stone quarry. The previous post shows a stone crushing plant, which worked only on the construction of the facility for 10 years and at the same time was a cover.
The construction of the reserve command post was supervised by the head of the construction department of the Black Sea Fleet, Major General L. Shumilov. Other equally famous officials, such as Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR N. Shestopalov and Admiral of the Fleet N. Khovrin, constantly visited the construction site.
Qualified specialists performed qualified work, and all the menial, heavy and unproductive work, practically free of charge, was carried out by soldiers from a construction battalion with a proud name - a special mining battalion.
By 1987, the construction battalion and miners had cut out two walls in the rock mass, converging at an acute angle, each of which was 500 m long and 16 meters high and wide. In addition, a huge water tank measuring 100x12x10 m and many auxiliary compartments were cut down. All rooms were connected to each other by a system of corridors. The total area of the two-tier underground complex was about 20,000 square meters. m. Two ventilation shafts 180 m long and 4.5 m in diameter, equipped with spiral staircases, led to the surface of the mountain.

Photo 9.

After completion of the mining work, internal installation of the premises, laying of ventilation shafts and cable lines began.
An important stage in the construction of object 221 was the waterproofing of underground premises. A special technology was even developed for sealing seams during welding, as well as metal insulation. X-rays were used to check the quality of the seam and its waterproofness.

Photo 10.

Here in front of us are the surviving pieces of this metal thermos. The iron sheets were 9 mm thick.

Photo 11.

Unfortunately, due to secrecy, there are no old photographs or other mentions of what the object was anywhere, but it is known that the object was more than 90% complete! But, due to the collapse of the USSR, construction was stopped, and the object itself was located on the territory of Ukraine, which declared itself a nuclear-free state, plus disarmament and so on, and the object was simply not needed. They say that he was essentially bought for next to nothing by the local mafia, which sold all liquid equipment and non-ferrous metals, after which local wildlings, natives and marauders who had absolutely no brains began to cut him down. As a result of an inept sawing, the entrance collapsed, where, according to legend, he was killed alive. buried one of the local wildlings.

Photo 12.

This is what it looks like from the inside.

Photo 13.

Meanwhile, mining was carried out on an industrial scale. From a 20th-century construction project, the site has turned into a 21st-century demolition project. To put it bluntly, the persistence of the plumbers is “admirable.” It is almost impossible to cut sheets of metal from the walls - the embedded parts are welded from the inside in a chaotic manner, but they still cut.

Photo 14.

Branching tunnels. By the way, some of them can even be driven by car, just like modern parking lots.

Photo 15.

The site has very high humidity and a temperature of 7-8 degrees. As a result, fog is formed. It’s good that I had anti-condensation glass 17-40L, which completely protected the lens from condensation that formed only on the eyepiece and the protective filter.

Photo 16.

I also want to say that visiting the site can be dangerous; you need to watch your step. This surprise may await you - falling into a hole on the backing track.

Photo 17.

Some pits were closed by role players.

Photo 18.

The backing track is a room with a height of 2-3 meters, but there are also deeper ones, in particular a ventilation shaft with a height of 180 m. And in fact, what’s scary is not so much the fall itself, as the fact that you simply can’t get out of there due to the fact that the wildlings sawed down all the stairs and you may starve to death. So, watch your step!

Photo 19.

Another danger of the object is living bandits and natives. Of course, there is little left of the object, but nevertheless, you can still find and saw off something. Meeting with them is highly undesirable.
However, despite the danger, the local roleplayers are playing Stalker and Metro 2033 here.

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Utility room.

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Object diagram.

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Diesel generators were located here.

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Once upon a time, pipes passed through these holes.

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The premises where the computer center was located.

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And this puddle of radiation is where the reactor well is located. According to legend, it would be quite possible to place a small nuclear reactor here, like on nuclear-powered ships, but according to another version, power was provided only by diesel generators.

Photo 41.

A strange hall 10 meters high. At the end there is a natural breed.

Photo 42.

Fuel storage. There are huge diesel fuel storage tanks down here.

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Living quarters were located here.
The looters destroyed everything, even the ceilings, in search of reinforcement, and looked for any pieces of metal.

Photo 47.

One of the vertical trunks. The sheets of iron are still intact, because the wild ones didn’t have the brains to cut them out.

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In front of us is the trunk of a vertical commutation shaft. There was an antenna on top. We will return to it later.

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Metal room. Obviously we haven't had time to cut it yet.

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But we are at the very top. Communication equipment was located here.

Photo 59.

They destroyed absolutely everything, including ceilings in search of any piece of metal, and for some reason only this room survived. Well, it's shit, not people, right?

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What would it be like at a Soviet facility without Lenin? no way. True, this has already been drawn by enthusiasts.

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Tits are just flesh.

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Well, as they say, we climbed and headed out.

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ZY!!! And of course Z.Y. Let's go upstairs. This is where the communication antenna was located.

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We go down, abandoning the rotten tree so that we can get out.

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Let's crawl along the pipe.

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Small technical room.

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This is where the vertical switching trunk passes

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Remains of pipes in which cables were located.

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Well, here is the same vertical trunk that was mentioned earlier. Top view only.

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So it goes. Click like, subscribe, I will delight you with new interesting objects. Bye everyone.

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Designed using "

The command center of the Black Sea Fleet is a forgotten underground fortress, comparable to the “Granite Palace” built by the Americans in the Rocky Mountains.

Justification of the need for construction of the facility

Both Brezhnev and Gorshkov proceeded from the realities of the American “Drop shot” nuclear attack plan (“Instant Strike”, late 1949), according to which it was planned to drop 300 atomic bombs and 250 thousand tons of conventional bombs on the USSR over six thousand sorties.
It was planned to fire 12 nuclear warheads on Sevastopol: one on Inkerman, one on Balaklava, and the rest on the city itself - the main base of the Black Sea Fleet. The reserve command post (Object-221) was supposed to withstand this nuclear barrage.

Map of the General Staff L-36-128 location of the facility

History of construction
Excerpts from the book by V.B. Ivanov “Underground Secrets”:

Creation of the underground brain center of the Black Sea Fleet (“Object-221”)

The Cold War was intensifying its deadly arms race. In the USA and China, France and Sweden, headquarters and barracks, missile launchers and ship moorings, military factories and airfields, arsenals and storage facilities for strategic supplies went underground, under rocks, under concrete. Everyone was preparing to survive in the prophesied atomic war - the third and last world war.
The shock of 1941 confronted the Soviet leadership with the need to prepare for crushing attacks on its territory from under water, from the air, from space...
One of the important tasks facing the Black Sea Fleet by the beginning of the 80s was the creation of a new modern protected fleet command post.
The planned secret facility was to become the largest defensive structure in the southern strategic direction.
The facility was created in the 70-80s of the last century; its construction was carried out on the eastern slope of the mountain range near the village of Morozovka, 4 kilometers from Balaklava. The deep underground bunker, from which combat control of the fleet was to be conducted in the event of a thermonuclear war, was guarded nine years ago by submachine gunners in black berets of the Marine Corps.
By the beginning of the 70s of the last century, the technical, economic and operational characteristics of the old Black Sea Fleet command post no longer met the ever-increasing requirements for secrecy, protection and survivability of such structures. In order to ensure the required quality of protection and increase the reliability of the communications and fleet control system, in the early 70s, a search began for a place for a new command post, which would allow controlling the actions of diverse forces of the Black Sea Fleet in a nuclear war.
Of the three possible options, the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei Gorshkov, chose the area of the eastern slope of the Shaan-Kaya mountain east of Balaklava, which translated means “target mountain.”
Construction here, according to economists, was cheaper than in other places. And a natural rock monolith is stronger than an artificial one. In order to carry out this unthinkable fortification task, a special mining battalion was formed. To help its fighters, units of the Donetskshakhtprohodka trust, which had extensive experience in constructing concrete silos for ballistic missiles, were assigned.
On an undeveloped site, in the rocky soil of a hill, in 1977, tunneling work began on the construction of the facility. At the beginning, construction was carried out by the Sevastopol-Polish gay contractor UNR. who at that time was carrying out a large volume of housing construction at the main fleet base on his own. To sink the first vertical shaft in an undeveloped site, in the complete absence of an approach and access roads, or any utilities, a unit of the Donetskshakhtprohodka trust, mining construction site No. 1, was chosen, which was led by mining engineer Kukharevsky.
This department specialized in drilling vertical shafts for missile systems throughout the Soviet Union and had extensive experience working on autonomous facilities.
The construction site team completed the task on time with high quality work. The foreman of the tunnelers, Hero of Socialist Labor, N. Tikhonov, made a great personal contribution. The completed first vertical shaft, more than 150 meters deep, was used during horizontal excavation as a ventilation shaft, which significantly accelerated the pace of drilling and blasting operations.
In parallel with the start of mining work, the design of the brain center of the command post, which had no analogues in the navy, was carried out, and this was done by the Moscow Design Institute.
An underground structure under a 180-meter thickness of rocks was to house a communications center that would provide communication via satellites with ships located anywhere in the world's oceans, an information and computing center, an autonomous life support system - a power plant, tanks for water and fuel , ventilation and air regeneration system, kitchen-dining room, first-aid post. The internal premises could accommodate hundreds of specialists - headquarters officers, signalmen, and maintenance personnel.
Outside the underground part of the command post, a town was provided to accommodate duty shifts, security, and maintenance personnel. The town consisted of a four-story barracks, a boiler room, a canteen with 250 seats, a vegetable storehouse, sewage treatment plants, a water supply system with underground water intake, and a powerful power line with substations.
The construction of the command post itself, external networks and the ground town required the creation of a new construction department. By the directive of the Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR for the construction and quartering of troops dated June 15, 1981, a special UNR was created on the basis of a general contractor with a deployment in Sevastopol. Major Yu.I. was appointed its head. Reva, who went through construction school in the Northern Fleet. The general contractor construction site that carried out the construction of the command post was headed by an experienced civil engineer, Lieutenant Colonel I.I. Esipenko, who made decisions independently, skillfully worked with subcontractors.
Despite the apparent simplicity of the ground part of the checkpoint, construction turned out to be quite complex. Buildings erected on steep slopes began to be exposed to landslides and groundwater. This required additional design solutions. A specialized construction organization of the Kharkovmetrostroy trust (headed by L.M. Lutsik) worked on the horizontal excavation of the underground part of the control point.
It was a highly qualified team of machine operators, drillers, and demolition workers with a powerful production base. They built their own concrete plant, well-equipped workshops for the production of various metal structures, a woodworking shop, and a stationary compressor station to supply compressed air to rotary hammers, rock loaders and concrete pumps. Military builders considered it a matter of honor to be included in the mining team.
As a rule, there was one platoon at underground work. For a long time it was headed by midshipman T.V. Pavlyuk. He worked a lot with the personnel. Often he himself picked up a jackhammer or shovel and inspired his subordinate military builders by personal example. This was the best platoon in the military construction troops of the Black Sea Fleet. The attack on the bowels of the earth lasted almost five years. During this time, it was possible to lay hundreds of meters of concrete corridors in the mountain range.
Vertical excavation of shaft No. 2 was continued by the construction team under the leadership of A.I. Simakova. During the construction of the control point in rocky rocks, hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of heavy soil had to be excavated.
In plan, the underground command post resembled a huge letter “A”; it communicated with the world by two diverging walls, which were blocked at the entrances by massive anti-nuclear doors with airlock chambers.
The construction of three blocks was envisaged in the mountain range. The first two blocks housed all the main command and control services.
Two shafts with a height of 180 meters and a diameter of 4.5 meters went up. They served for air intake and cable route output to antenna devices. If necessary, it was possible to climb along them to the surface - iron spiral staircases ran around them from the inside. Ingenious locks, valves, and filters reliably protected the bunker's inhabitants from poisonous gases and radioactive dust. The antenna waveguides for space communications with ships and submarines should also be installed here, at the top of the command post.
The dimensions of each block were: height and width - 16 meters, length - 130 meters. The third block, technological, had smaller dimensions: height - 7.5 meters, width - 6 meters, length - 130 meters. All three blocks were connected to each other by six walk-through turns with anti-splinter lining.
The walls, each 500 meters long, approached the underground structure directly. The level of security was extremely high.
In two blocks the construction of four-story premises was carried out, in the third - two-story ones. Four-story buildings had to be erected underground, in a confined space. The use of conventional construction equipment - tower or truck cranes - was excluded. Special equipment and various lifts with a winch were used. At the suggestion of the head of the site V.I. Yanchuk installed two crane beams and used them to install reinforced concrete columns and floor slabs, followed by pouring concrete.
One can only wonder how the builders managed to do this without cranes and other bulky equipment.
Ensuring the waterproofing of underground premises and protecting them from the penetration of groundwater has become a very important and responsible matter. For this purpose, a technology for metal insulation and sealing of welds was developed. Such work was entrusted only to highly qualified welders; each seam was scanned with an X-ray machine.
The underground area of the 3-block protected command post of the Black Sea Fleet was more than 13,500 sq.m. and the area of the multi-tiered underground premises of the complex reached - 22 000 sq.m. The length of the pedestrian corridors of the complex exceeded three and a half kilometers, and the volume of underground premises exceeded 80,000 sq.m.
The total area of the premises of the 4-storey underground building of the first block was about 5 thousand sq.m. The area of the premises of the 2-story underground building of the third block was more than 1.5 thousand sq.m. In order to get to the underground brain center of the Black Sea Fleet, you must first travel half a kilometer long.
From the platform in front of the portal of the northern entrance to the command post there was a delightful view of the Crimean hills, of fertile valleys under the fiery sunset sky. All underground excavation was carried out in compliance with the standards of careful camouflage. False equipment was displayed, false clearings and roads were laid. The legend of the construction of a ground training center was being created. During this period, extensive work was carried out to form the territory (organize the relief) for the construction of ground structures. The construction sites were located mainly on mountain slopes, in wooded areas without convenient approaches. It was necessary to create retaining walls by laying 6,000 cubic meters of concrete.
Russian military writer Captain 1st Rank Nikolai Cherkashin, whom the author of these lines repeatedly took there on excursions, describes his impressions in the magazine “Top Secret” for 2000: “One can only wonder how the builders managed to build a four-story building inside the mountain and do it without cranes and other bulky equipment. The builders—the assemblers of the Black Sea Fleet—reminded me of those sophisticated craftsmen who assemble sailboats in bottles... It’s really hard to believe that the mountain is hollow, like a Kinder Surprise chocolate egg. To build roads, clearings were cut down. Deforestation in Crimea is possible only with the purchase of a “cutting ticket.” Hardwood forests—oak, beech, hornbeam—were difficult to saw. I had to sharpen the saws every day. The clearing was made on time; the road, winding, went into dense thickets of oak trees with clearings cut through. They were laid to disguise the object as a forest plot. The entrance portals were given the appearance of facades of two-story houses. The windows on the second floor were painted with black paint. In photographs taken from spy satellites, the service buildings in the restricted area were no different from the nearby Alsu pioneer camp. For those especially curious, a rumor was spread that a naval training center was being built near Target Mountain...”
The progress of construction of the fleet command post was constantly monitored by the head of the construction department of the Black Sea Fleet. Deputy Commander for Construction, Major General L.V. Shu-milov. Fleet commanders Admirals N.I. Khovrin. M.N. Chronopulo regularly visited this object. Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union S. Gorshkov, Deputy Minister of Defense, Marshal of the Engineering Troops N.F. Shestopalov repeatedly visited the construction site, getting acquainted with the progress of work.
In 1986-1987, the main mining work was completed.
We started laying the ventilation system, cable panels, cladding and finishing of the blocks. Installation of interior equipment has begun. It was planned to equip the command post with complex and expensive equipment, which began to be supplied to the fleet. Special premises were required for its storage, and therefore the work on the body section, which since April 1985 was headed by Captain I.D. Ganin. He had a good command of the situation, knew how to make decisions independently and defend them.
The entry of surface ships and submarines of the Navy into the oceans presented fundamentally new requirements for communications control centers. They obliged to ensure reliable round-the-clock communication with surface ships and submarines operating both on the surface and underwater, anywhere in the world’s oceans. And such a global communication system was created. Its integral part was the communications system of the Black Sea Fleet. To solve this complex problem, it was necessary to build new modern radio centers, multi-channel trunk lines of wired and satellite communications. The customer for the construction of unique radio communication facilities “Peleng”, “Lafet”, “Crystal”, “Kvarts” was the communications department of the Black Sea Fleet.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, funding for the construction of the “secret” facility N9 221 was stopped. The Black Sea Fleet command post was abandoned at 90 percent readiness, the builders left, the security was removed. Russia emerged from the Cold War, and Ukraine refused an anti-nuclear shelter for the headquarters of its naval forces.

From 1992 to 1998, a painful period of searching for a new, peaceful use for the bunker lasted. A number of entrepreneurs came up with proposals to locate enterprises there for bottling mineral water and/or alcoholic beverages. In particular, quite sensible opinions were expressed about the prospects of repurposing “Object 221” into a winery. But local authorities, with a tenacity worthy of better use, blocked any initiatives.
And the facility, which was supposed to withstand megaton strikes from nuclear warheads, found itself face to face with the most terrible enemy. Marauders. And the object fell and could not withstand their onslaught.

Today

From the point of view of a banal looter, the object was a promising deposit of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. Copper power wires and communication cables were stretched along the entire half-kilometer length of the supply lines. To estimate the mass of copper, I will give the number of “shelves” on which the cable routes were laid. In each of the two walls, 10 tiers of steel “shelves” were mounted along one wall, each of which could carry more than 5 cables with an outer diameter of 60 millimeters. In addition to the walls, the cable routes were included in all three blocks and were routed inside.

But this is non-ferrous metal. And it was also black. Armored gates on the portals and armored protective-hermetic doors at the entrances to the blocks. Steel cladding of the most critical walls and steel reinforcement of all other partitions and ceilings. Steel hermetic doors, hatches and seals. Steel pipelines for various purposes.
Let's add steel stairs. They connected all 5 floors of the underground structure with each other. In addition, two 180-meter spiral staircases led to the very top of the mountain... The total mass of metal amounted to thousands of tons! The looting reached industrial proportions. People entered the posterns on motorcycles and scooters. Temporary electrical networks were installed inside, from which lamps, jackhammers and cooking transformers were powered. However, acetylene-oxygen technology was more popular.

By the end of 2002, hundreds (if not thousands) of tons had not only been dismantled, but cut up and removed. “Tsvetnyak” was filmed already in 1999. Then, around the portals, the ground under the steel cable braids that remained after “stripping” the copper cores was not visible. Now there are no more braids there: today’s robbers do not disdain “black stuff”.
Armored doors and hatches have been cut off. The same fate befell the steel parts of cable routes, pipes and stairs. Now the turn has come to steel door jambs and other “small things”. However, many tons of this little detail remained at the site, so the process continues...

The same building with painted windows (western portal)

The map of the main tunnels compiled by diggers gives only a general idea of the structure of the complex, but detailed diagrams are still buried in the archives - the design documentation is protected better than the bunker itself.
There is no confirmed evidence that the room designated as the “nuclear well” was actually supposed to house a reactor. Only diesel generators are known for certain, but could they provide the necessary survivability?

Airlock chambers, or rather what’s left of them.

Pitiful scraps of wires are all that remains of the communications that were laid throughout the entire territory of “Object 221”. They say that the cables were torn out very simply: they were tied to a tractor and pulled out as much as was pulled out... Narrow rusty stripes on the wall - the metal left over from the casing, welded to the embedded parts going into the concrete.

The “attic” of the structure, the mountains of rubble on the floor, are the remains of interior partitions. Reinforcement was extracted from them.

This gap was once a staircase. The steps were cut off because they were metal.

The miraculously preserved hatch has probably already been cut down by now.

Improvised entrance. Locals say that this wall was undermined specifically to make it easier to pull long metal structures out of the bunker.