HOLEY HELL
Mystery as huge crater dubbed ‘portal to the underworld’ opens up near Ukraine border as Russia quickly fills it in
One theory suggests that the crater was caused by a Russian missile
A GIANT crater has been branded a "portal to the underworld" by baffled locals after opening up near the Ukraine border.
The deep sinkhole emerged in a cornfield in the Russian mining town of Gukovo in Rostov region.
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Locals from Rostov suspect that the crater was caused by a collapsed mine shaft.
But the town administration is adamant that there were no working mines beneath the crater.
One Russian bystander dubbed the gaping hole the “portal to the underworld”, while another referred to it as a “screw alien base”.
Another theory that has been circulating on social media is that the crater was caused by a giant Russian missile landing above a mineshaft.
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A local man filmed the strange hole soon after it appeared saying he had been ordered to fill it in.
The man sarcastically said: "I've got a job today that is the envy of the world."
He continued: "Here's a field, here's the middle of the field and then a ******* piece of the field collapsed into a mine.
"It's so ******* deep it's scary to look at."
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As the man continued to peer over the edge, the man said he couldn't see the bottom, nor tell how deep it was.
The man added: “It just ******* came out of nowhere. I don't even know how deep it is. It just collapsed underground.”
Russian officials quickly rushed out to fill the gaping hole, according to reports.
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Unverified footage appeared not long afterwards, showing a pile of earth over the gigantic sinkhole.
It is unclear whether the hole has actually been filled, or just covered.
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Other theories include that the hole was created by a "black gold" mine, an unofficial shaft that had been used to dig for coal.
Alongside all of the emerging theories, many Russians expressed concern over the hole.
The closest residential buildings are just a few hundred feet away, and could be vulnerable to such collapses of the earth.
This is not the first time that a sinkhole has suddenly appeared in Russia.
Back in 2014 specialist research teams were sent to Yamal Peninsula in northern Russia when an 80m sinkhole appeared 30km away from the Bovanenkovo gas field.
In the same year, a mine operated by the Uralkali corporation in Solikamsk was flooded and caused a 30m crater.
Only 10 months later, that same crater had quadrupled in size and measured a whopping 120m.
Other craters have begun to pop up more frequently as a result of Putin's war against Ukraine.
Just a few months ago, Russia admitted to blitzing a village in Petropavlovka, Voronezh region, Russia, in a blunder that left several buildings smouldering around a crater.
Locals from the village, which has a population of 4,819, were evacuated and transported to temporary accommodation centres.
In September last year, a bomb dropped by a Russian Su-34 fighter jet also blasted a 70-foot crater in the city of Belgorod.
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Dramatic video captures the moment the explosion rips through the street, causing the surface of the road to erupt dozens of feet into the air.
Pictures show a nearby apartment that was gutted in the blast which left debris scattered across the scene.
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