Fears rise for civilian safety as Ukraine investigates locked air-raid shelters

KYIV – Concerns around civilian safety spiked in Ukraine on Saturday, as officials announced that an inspection had found nearly a quarter of the country’s air-raid shelters locked or unusable, just days after a woman in Kyiv allegedly died waiting outside a shuttered shelter during a Russian missile barrage.

The Ukrainian interior ministry said through its press service Saturday that of the “over 4,800” shelters it had inspected, 252 were locked and a further 893 “unfit for use.”

That same day, the Kyiv regional prosecutor’s office reported that four people were detained in a criminal probe into the 33-year-old’s death on Thursday outside the locked shelter. The prosecutor’s office said that one person, a security guard who had failed to unlock the doors, remained under arrest, while three others, including a local official, had been put under house arrest.

According to the prosecutor’s office, the suspects face up to eight years in prison for official negligence that led to a person’s death.

Also on Saturday, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said that city authorities have received “more than a thousand” complaints regarding locked, dilapidated or insufficient air-raid shelters within a day of launching an online feedback service.

In a Telegram update, Klitschko reported that “almost half” of the complaints concerned facilities being locked, while about a quarter had to do with them being in poor condition. Some 250 Kyiv residents wrote in to complain of a lack of nearby shelters.

The interior ministry said that over 5,300 volunteers, including emergency workers, police officers and local officials, would continue to inspect shelters across Ukraine.

Russia on Thursday launched a pre-dawn missile barrage at the Ukrainian capital, killing a 9-year old, her mother, and another woman, in what was the highest toll from a single attack on Kyiv over the past month. A 33-year-old woman died as she and others waited to enter a locked shelter, which left the group at the mercy of falling missile fragments, her husband told Ukrainian media.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian regional officials reported Saturday morning that Russian had shelling killed at least four civilians across the country in the previous 24 hours. A 67-year-old man died in the early hours of Saturday as Russian forces shelled the northeastern Kharkiv region from mortars, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram. According to Syniehubov, two other civilians were killed on Friday and overnight, while six more, including a 3-year-old boy, suffered wounds.

In the frontline Kherson region in the south, two boys aged 10 and 13 were hospitalized with “serious” injuries after an explosive device detonated Saturday in a village playground, regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin reported. Prokudin also said that five others, including two children, were wounded by Russian shelling over the previous day.