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April 17, 2026, 6:22 p.m.
The Accent found out what the utility company dug up on Deribasivska Street
This article also available in English1
This spring, Odesa residents witnessed another excavation, but this time behind the construction fence on Deribasovska Street, at the bottom of a deep pit, utility workers accidentally unearthed an arched yellow stone structure, partially damaged by machinery.
Accent discussed with experts whether it was the basement of an old house, a fragment of underground passages, an engineering structure, or a part of the long-forgotten urban infrastructure.
The discovery instantly sparked a wave of discussions and fantasies on social media. According to businessman Dmytro Kazavchynskyi, it could be:
- Part of an old basement or warehouse.
- An element of a drainage or sewage system.
- A fragment of the underground infrastructure of the historic center.
Oleh Verishchagin from Odesa voiced his opinion on his YouTube channel that the people who laid these stones could not have been handmade, but processed by machines. However, Odesa local historian Dmytro Zhdanov is sure that these are ordinary, so-called mines.
"In general, all of our catacombs are not catacombs, because catacombs are underground burial structures, but mines. It's just that since the nineteenth century they have been called catacombs. It was either someone making a cellar or mining stones. Later the word mines was used to describe the passages into the loam. In the nineteenth century, the whole of Odesa was covered with such mines. If we start drilling a well near Odesa, we will find quite a few of them," the mining expert is sure.
He also noted that such mines can become an engineering problem, because if there is a void underground, sooner or later it will collapse.
Roman Mauser, a researcher of underground Odesa, also agrees that the utility companies dug up the mine.
"This is a basement within a basement. The fact is that basements were not used for their intended purpose before - people could live there, because housing was expensive and people dug in the basement for more. Sometimes they went very far. I'm almost 100% sure that the roof of the old mine has now been broken through. It is now blocked up and in order to investigate it, we need to dig it out completely, which we certainly cannot do," the researcher explained.
A number of other experts have voiced the mine option. Roman Mauser believes that such mines could be turned into historical artifacts to attract tourists, but this is not the time for this. Dmytro Zhdanov, on the other hand, believes that most of these mines should be buried to prevent them from collapsing. However, he does not rule out that one or two can be recreated and used as an attraction for tourists.
