war of aggression
Almost every second air raid shelter in Kiev is unusable
Hospital staff sit in a basement used as an air raid shelter during an air raid alert. photo
© Felipe Dana/AP/dpa
There are massive problems with air raid shelters in the Ukrainian capital. Almost every second one is either not ready for use – or not even accessible to auditors.
A commission of inquiry has declared almost half of the air-raid shelters it checked in Kiev as not ready for use.
“The situation remains critical,” Ukrainian Strategic Industries Minister Oleksandr Kamyshin wrote on Telegram. According to him, around 45 percent of the around 1,850 shelters checked were either not ready for use or not accessible to the inspectors.
There are said to be problems with access to air raid shelters in several districts of the Ukrainian capital, as Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram. Klitschko also pointed out that the administrations of the individual city districts had received around 1.2 billion hryvnia (about 30 million euros) for the construction of emergency shelters in the past two years. According to Klitschko, it is still being examined how these funds were used.
Nationwide situation slightly better
The situation looks slightly better nationwide: The Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior announced that of the more than 50,000 shelters checked nationwide (almost 80 percent of all Ukrainian air raid shelters), around 16,000 – i.e. about a third – were not ready for use or inaccessible.
A child and two adults were killed in a Russian air raid in Kiev last week – the nearest air raid shelter had been locked. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy then instructed the government to take action to improve the situation.