The great builder of the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) arsenal and space launchers, Pivdenmash, a short form of the Ukrainian for “Southern Machine-building Plant,” is today a shadow of its former self.Even with the current demand for weaponry for Ukraine’s war effort, Pivdenmash is mired in decades of financial missteps. While central Dnipro has benefited from a youth and tourist revival, the “city within a city” is a vortex of Soviet concrete and steel-gray cobblestone, called brukivka, much of it crumbling or bestrewn with graffiti. Many of the component factories that make up the whole complex are offline. It’s a fate shared with much of the rest of Dnipro’s industrial outskirts, which closely resemble an eastern bloc Detroit.While the U.S. is locked in some analogous wrestling with its own industrial legacy, Ukraine faces more acute challenges.