Exonumia from a war zone

Three for the price of one today! Mostly because I believe these all came from the Krasnolymanska Coal Mine in Ukraine, however I’m not 100% clear on how each was used. Trying to work out the text and run it through Google Translate, I came up with the text “ЩК-АИМ” on each, which Google tells me is “SHK-AIM”, which doesn’t give me any more insight. I probably got my Ukranian characters incorrect. For the rest:

For the square check, the text “СПУСК” possibly indicates “Descent”

For the triangle check, the text “ВЫЕЗД” may be “Departure”

For the round check, “ΛАМПА” may be “Lamp”

These appear to be the kind of “Pit checks” commonly collected in the UK. I have several of those, In its simplest form, a mine worker has one of these metal “checks”. They hand this to the “lamp man” at the start of their shift, in return for a lamp with the same number on it. This has several functions. It records how many workers are in attendance for things like salary payment. More importantly, in the event of an accident, rescue teams have some information about who is in the mine and potentially needs to be rescued.

Like many such checks, the back is blank, although on several we can see the impression of the hand stamped number from the other side. The text on the front was a little faint, so the first image is a bit over-contrasted to bring that out. The reverse pic is more natural, as is this one of only the round check:

The state owned Krasnolymanska coal mine has been in operation since 1958. I’m not sure when my checks were in use. Similar checks were phased out in the UK in 1990s. While they may well have lasted longer in Ukraine, being undated, it is hard to tell. The mine has one the largest coal reserves in Ukraine, estimated at 85.1 million tonnes.

Krasnolymanska coal mine is located in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. According to the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, most Donbas region mines were seized by Russians and pro-Russian rebels in late 2014 and many have endured electricity shortages and flooding ever since. The current output of the Donbas mines, including this one, is no longer transparent, and many are likely non-operational and on hiatus. No doubt the invasion of Ukraine has made things even more uncertain.

Gem.wiki has an image from Google Maps showing the mine. When I pulled it up on Google Maps myself, the image looks different, although I’m not sure which is newer (both indicate a copyright date of 2023). I found a site which claims to be a “catalogue of leading enterprises in Ukraine“. It lists some statistics about the mine and its output if you are interested. The site appears to invite corporate investment, although the link to the mine’s own website shows a site under construction page. Hopefully things are able to return to some normality for them soon.