Almost every second bomb shelter in Kiev is unusable

Hospital staff sit in a basement used as a bomb shelter during an air raid raid alarm. © Felipe Dana/AP/dpa

In the Ukrainian capital, there are massive problems with bomb shelters. Almost every second one is either not ready for use - or not even accessible to inspectors.

Kiev - A commission of inquiry has declared almost half of the bomb shelters it inspected in Kiev to be unoperational.

"The situation remains critical," Ukrainian Minister of Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin wrote on Telegram. Of the approximately 1850 shelters inspected, around 45 percent were either not operational or inaccessible to the inspectors, according to him.

There are said to be problems with access to air-raid shelters in several districts of the Ukrainian capital, as Kyiv 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 marginally better

Nationwide, the situation looks slightly better: The Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior announced that of the more than 50,000 shelters inspected nationwide (almost 80 percent of all Ukrainian bomb shelters), around 16,000 - about a third - were not operational or inaccessible.

Last week, a child and two adults were killed in a Russian airstrike in Kyiv - the nearest bomb shelter had been locked. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky then instructed the government to take care of improving the situation. Dpa