The Swiss military decided to stop selling bunkers after selling about 1,800 of the 8,000 shelters built between the end of World War II and the end of the Cold War due to the conflict in Ukraine.
According to Swiss national broadcaster RTS, which said the security environment in Europe has changed, the military has decided to reverse plans to sell another 1,500 underground shelters that had already been released, due to its new defense strategies.
About 4,700 military bunkers are no longer in use, but the military believes they may be needed again in the current climate, the head of the Swiss armed forces, Lieutenant General Thomas Süssli, said at a news conference this week.
Many of the bunkers sold over the past thirty years, often at very low prices, are now used in Switzerland as warehouses, museums, ‘unusual’ hotels or digital data archive centers, RTS reports.
In addition to military bunkers, the Central European country built hundreds of thousands of civilian air raid shelters during the Cold War, as the authorities set a goal in the 1960s that all citizens would have space in them in the event of an air raid or even a nuclear attack. .
National television reported earlier this year that the country is considering closing the smallest shelters, of which there are about 100,000, because in many cases the old ventilation systems in them no longer work.
In the past two decades, the construction of these structures in new buildings is no longer mandatory, except in blocks of at least 40 houses.
Source: DN
