The smallish industrial city Bakhmut in Ukraine is under heavy shelling since May 2022 now. The surrounding fields are so littered with lead that agricultural activities will be impossible for decades, even centuries, due to the land being poisoned. In France, the huge Red Zone area is still uninhabitable for humans, a 100 years after WW1 for the same reason.
Actually, the fights there started in 2014 already during the Maidan drama, when rebels from the Donetsk 'Republic' claimed the city as their own. The Ukrainian government said, give it back. The rebels, sipping some of the fine sparkling wine from the 236-feet below the ground winery the city is known for, said 'njet' in a voice translating as "fuck-off, it's ours now." The Ukrainian government felt an unbearable sense of loss, because vodka is important but wine is importanter. So they took the city back by force some months and many carcasses later, because they love salt too.
Ah, salt. Bakhmut at one stage, while under Soviet control, produced a whopping 12% of all the salt used in Mother Russia. Given that Russians didn't know how to operate a fridge, and that their country is by size the biggest on the planet, they salted everything as a preservative. So, a lot of salt was used, the four salt mines around Bakhmut ran around the clock. That's why so many Russian women get really old, while looking like dried fish. They were salted instead of manicured and plastered with Western mascara.
Many centuries ago - when the Church ruled all of Europe and got idiots to believe that the sun is dragged through the sky by a man on an oxcart, not kidding - salt was as valuable as gold. Only the rich and famous and royalty got to pinch a bit of it over their meals.
Bakhmut arrived a bit late on the white gold digging scene, with vast salt deposits only discovered in the 20th century. But then they dug away anyway. So much so, that Bakhmut today has the biggest underground 'room' in the world, underneath the suburb Soledar, owned by the Artemsil salt mine company. Remember, this happened under the USSR flag. 200 kilometers of tunnels underneath the city, a 100 meters below the surface, and most big enough to house troops and pick them up in pure Uber-style right there with tanks. That, kids, is why Ukraine is working so hard to keep the Russians out. Because once in there, it will be Azov in Mariupol all over again, just the other team playing mole.
We know that Russian men are by nature primitive cavemen, and one can see it in the way they treat their bitches, and how they rape innocent women and children during their war sprees. (Maybe we should read up on the Syrian war as well.) Such a big man-made cave system is therefore not a surprise.
How big, you ask? Well, a whole inflated pumped up hot air balloon was fit into there, for the Soviet regime to brag about it. "Look, 'Murica!'" The Americans still didn't grasp its size because it was not given in feet and miles, and it didn't have 'spy balloon Made in China' printed on a solar panel, so the Communists played two professional football matches in there, at the same time.
