The blue line of the capital's metro may get another hole
"Kiev Metro" checks structures and soils near the Poshtovaya Ploshchad metro station. The State Audit Service, the State Research Institute of Building Structures, the Specialized Department for Anti-Landslide Underground Works, public organizations and businesses announced the danger to the entire infrastructure hub: the metro station, the square, and nearby buildings. If the accident is confirmed, it will be necessary to temporarily close Poshtova Square and limit the movement of the metro. The problem arose due to many years of inactivity of utility workers and city officials who did not carry out emergency work in the underground pit under the square.
On May 2, on Poshtova Square, according to Olga Rutkovskaya, a member of the Ukrainian National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites and one of the initiators of the creation of a modern archaeological museum, representatives of the engineering service of the Kiev Metro conducted a visual inspection of the condition of the underground pit, which is located at a distance of 9 -15 meters from the metro station and Poshtovaya Ploshcha tunnels. According to unofficial data, the utility company is going to order an expert study of the condition of structures and soils around the metro station. And this can already be considered a victory for the public and experts, who have been warning about the unsafe situation of Poshtova Square since 2019, but until now the city authorities have ignored all appeals.
On April 23, the issue of the accident rate of Poshtova Square was raised at a meeting of the temporary special commission of the Verkhovna Rada on Kyiv issues, and this caused a real scandal. Representatives of the Kyiv City State Administration and the Kyiv City Council present at the commission transferred the hands and responsibility to the Verkhovna Rada of the previous convocation, which on July 5, 2018 adopted the Resolution “On the preservation of historical and cultural heritage on Poshtova Square in the city of Kyiv.” Officials complained that it was this document that prevented them from carrying out conservation and emergency work for five years that would ensure safety on Poshtovaya Square in the metro station of the same name and preserve the lives and health of people.
After the Verkhovna Rada commission, all parties to the conflict began to speak publicly about the long-term problem and the accident rate of the Post Office, including, for example, the odious architect Andrei Mirgorodsky and even the head of the State Administration of Affairs during the times of the fugitive president Yanukovych, Andrei Kravets, who are directly related to this situation. Moreover, the State Audit Service also made a statement about the emergency situation of the square and the metro station, judging by the message from which a year ago it warned the city authorities that the entire infrastructure unit was under threat of destruction: the metro station, the square, the nearest buildings, including the building of the State Audit Service itself . But this statement remained unheeded by the Department of Transport Infrastructure. It seems that many people know about the many years of inactivity of the city authorities on Poshtovaya Square.
Let me remind you that the eight-meter-deep pit under Pochtovaya Square appeared as a result of a large city project to reconstruct the transport interchange on Pochtovaya Square in the Podolsk district of Kyiv. Starting in 2012, first an overpass and a tunnel were built using public funds, and private funds were used to create a “multifunctional facility” (a shopping center) under the square. The investor of the latest construction was the company Hansford Ukraine LLC, associated with the mentioned Andrey Kravets. However, when they started digging the foundation pit in 2014, they immediately found significant archaeological finds. Therefore, since 2019, this territory of 6 thousand square meters. m. is a Monument of History and Archeology of National Significance.
Construction of the shopping center on Poshtovaya Square stopped on July 10, 2017, when a conflict arose between archaeologists and the developer and the public intervened. The public protest on Pochtovaya Square is one of the strongest in confrontation with the city authorities in many years; it united several dozen public organizations, and millions of people know about Pochtovaya’s findings today.
Since then, the construction of the shopping center has not begun and today it is legally impossible, since the permitting documents (urban planning conditions and restrictions) were finally canceled by the Supreme Court of Ukraine on July 27, 2022 (decision in case 826/16076/18), and according to the aforementioned resolution of the Verkhovna Rada dated 5 July 2018, it will be possible to build on Poshtovaya Square only after the creation of the national museum “Center of the Medieval City” on the territory of the Monument of History and Archeology of National Significance.
When the construction of the shopping center was stopped, the customer for the reconstruction of the transport interchange on Poshtovaya Square (both phases: both budgetary and private) KP “Directorate for the Construction of Road Transport Facilities of the City of Kyiv” was obliged to mothball the underground pit and ensure the implementation of emergency measures in it.
According to the requirements of the Regulations on the procedure for conservation and re-preservation of construction projects, approved by order of the Ministry of Regional Development dated October 21, 2005, the utility company is responsible for the state of unfinished construction. Since the new transport interchange was created for budgetary funds, and the “multifunctional facility” was part of the transport infrastructure (the walls of the shopping center are the walls of an overpass and a tunnel, and even the floor slab on the surface of the square is divided into investor and budgetary parts), the construction customer had to using budgetary funds, order an emergency response project and carry it out in order to prevent danger to the life and health of citizens.
The city authorities decided to interpret the cessation of construction of the shopping center as “don’t get it from anyone” and simply abandoned Pochtovaya. Referring to the fact that the investor stopped allocating funds, the customer washed his hands: he did not mothball the unfinished project and did not take emergency measures. They say they banned the construction of a shopping center, so there was no money for anything.
Judging by the letter from the former general contractor for the construction of the underground shopping center “Altis Holding” dated June 1, 2020, since the beginning of 2019, rain and groundwater drainage has not worked at all in the underground pit of the square in the immediate vicinity of the metro station. After, by decision of the investor Hansford Ukraine LLC, the supply of electricity to the construction site was stopped and four pumps that pumped out rain and groundwater from 12 wells were stopped, the territory of the underground pit began to be heavily flooded. And so on for more than five years!
Here are the possible negative consequences indicated in the letter from the former general contractor: “destruction of temporary structural elements, which can with a high probability lead to the collapse of soil into the underground space of the pedestrian part of Poshtova Square in Kyiv. Kyiv, which in turn, of course, may have cause-and-effect relationships with the influence of corresponding forces on the floor slab of the area, which can cause its destruction, as well as destruction and/or damage to the structures of buildings located on Vladimirskaya Hill (above the construction site), influence on the safe and uninterrupted operation of the “blue” line of the Kiev metro, as a result of an uncontrolled emergency impact, which, among other things, can cause displacement of tunnels and damage to internal engineering systems, etc.”
Other experts share a similar opinion.
From the letter of the KP “Specialized Department for Anti-Landslide Underground Works” dated 2019, it follows: “Deformations of the elements of the retaining walls of the facility on Poshtovaya Square are possible due to the general deterioration of the technical condition of the unfinished construction site, emergency leaks from water-carrying communications in the territory adjacent to the construction site, flooding of its underground part groundwater and unfinished work on the installation of a surface drainage system.”
According to a letter from the State Enterprise “State Research Institute of Building Structures” dated March 11, 2020, “in some areas of the facility, there is filtration of groundwater through the fencing of the pit and soaking of load-bearing and enclosing structures with surface and groundwater. This is facilitated by stopping the operation of the drainage system (water is not pumped out from drainage wells) and the flow of surface water. This leads to the destruction of the protective layer of concrete and corrosion of the reinforcement of reinforced concrete structures.” By the way, this expert organization did and published research on Poshtovaya Square at the beginning of construction in 2015 and warned: if horizontal and vertical drainage of rainwater is not done, then there will definitely be trouble with both the square and the metro station. They were not heard.
We emphasize that the Kyiv City State Administration has also been aware of the danger since at least 2019. From the protocol of the Standing Commission on Technogenic-Environmental Safety and Emergency Situations of the Executive Body of the Kyiv City Council (KCCA) No. 20 dated June 20, 2019, it follows that “as a result of the rise of groundwater, the soil mass around the construction site will be completely soaked with a change in the physical and mechanical characteristics of the soils of which it consists, which will lead to additional deformations of nearby buildings. Such deformations can also lead to subsidence of subway tunnels, the foundations of surrounding buildings, and emergency situations with unpredictable consequences.”
What to do
Since there is a problem, it must be solved, and not try to hush it up or manipulate it. The resolution of the Verkhovna Rada mentioned by officials of the Kyiv City State Administration before the creation of the museum prohibits construction work on Poshtova Square, and not work to preserve archaeological finds or emergency response. The term “construction work” was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers resolution “On some issues of preparatory and construction work”. Such work includes: new construction, reconstruction, restoration, major repairs. Water drainage and emergency work are not included in the list, so the Verkhovna Rada did not prohibit their implementation.
People's deputies plan to visit Poshtovaya Square. This was announced by parliamentarian Vitaly Bezgin (“Servant of the People”), who heads the temporary special commission of the Verkhovna Rada on Kyiv issues. We hope that the state and city authorities will do everything to prevent further complications in the underground pit on Pochtovaya Square and at the metro station, will monitor the objectivity of the hydraulic technical examination of the condition of the metro and the unfinished construction site - the pit on Pochtovaya Square, will close the square and finally carry out emergency measures.
After which it will be possible to return to the issue of legal construction on Poshtova Square, namely, an underground archaeological museum, because a public museum already exists and operates there. It was not the authorities, not the investor, not the contractor or customer of the construction, and not even the military administration, but the community itself that protected and protected the finds of Poshtovaya Square all these years, and fought against flooding. More than five years every day.
