Ukraine Using 'Hedgehogs' to Combat Russian Tanks

Ukrainian locals are engineering an obstacle to protect their cities and towns from Russian tanks. The "steel hedgehogs," also known as "Czech hedgehogs," date back to anti-tank engineering developed between the world wars and an early model built in Czechoslovakia during the 1930s.

When Russia's tanks and artillery rolled into Ukraine on February 24, they signaled that the country was not just launching attacks on its neighbor, but beginning a full-scale invasion. Ukrainian civilians quickly got to work building defenses.

Among these was the hedgehog, a large barricade made of steel I-beams. The structure is designed to revolve under a wheeled vehicle and puncture it, or to lodge under a tracked vehicle, such as a tank, and lift it up in the air, according to a U.S. Army Engineer School correspondence course on fortifications. Due to their shape, hedgehogs typically need to be removed up close, unlike other barriers that can be blasted from a distance.

The obstacles are particularly useful in dense or urban environments. Tanks operate most effectively on open land, struggling more when they are surrounded by trenches, forests, narrow roads and cities. An urban path blocked with hedgehogs could force a tank to reroute.

In Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine, furniture builder Tarass Filipchak decided to build anti-tank barriers on the first day of the Russian invasion. He was building a house at the time, he told Agence France-Presse and realized that some of the construction materials could be repurposed to produce hedgehogs.

Filipchak posted on Facebook and Instagram about his plans, drawing friends, acquaintances and even strangers who showed up to contribute materials or offer their labor. Filipchak said he knew how to work with metal, but none of them had experience in war or military engineering.

"We went on Wikipedia, looked at where they came from, who had invented them and we started to do the same," he told Agence France-Presse.

One volunteer, an artist whose exhibition was halted when the war began, joined the efforts to build hedgehogs after fleeing from Kyiv to the relatively safer city of Lviv.

"I couldn't think about art anymore," Volo Bevza told the magazine Hyperallergic. "It was good to do some physical work and feel that we're helping somehow."

Bezva said the group quickly ran out of metal. Instead, they have been using old railroad tracks to build their barricades. The volunteers have made over 100 hedgehogs that have been sent to protect cities across Ukraine.

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