Kyiv clamps down on bunker rules after residents died outside locked shelter

KYIV, Ukraine - A map led the team to a gated entrance of a yellow-brick building, a place designated by Ukraine’s capital as a bunker for residents to take cover from near-nightly Russian airstrikes.

But there was no sign marking the nondescript door as a bomb shelter. And when the city inspectors arrived, the gate was locked.

One team member offered to call a neighborhood official to open it.

“It’s not going to work like that,” said the man in charge, Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s minister of strategic industries. “He’s not going to be here when there’s an air raid siren.”

Nearly 16 months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, and with Western allies spending billions of dollars to help Kyiv defend its skies, Moscow’s recent relentless air assault on the capital has laid bare a shortage — and occasional mismanagement — of the most basic protection for residents: bomb shelters.

The issue was tragically thrust to the forefront of public awareness this month when three people were killed outside a locked bunker during a nighttime airstrike. One victim, Nataliya Belchenko, was pounding desperately on the locked door to the shelter where she and her daughter always took cover. Then debris rained down from an intercepted missile. The other victims, a 9-year-old girl and her mother, were running toward the same bunker located in a medical clinic.

Their deaths quickly became political, the latest point of tension between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko. The mayor blamed local officials appointed by Zelensky, who he said were responsible for managing the city’s shelters. Zelensky, in response, blamed the mayor.

“Russia, as the enemy, is not enough for us; we have internal enemies as well,” he told reporters. In reference to disputes with the mayor, a former champion professional boxer, Zelensky added: “I would say this: There may be a knockout.”

On Wednesday, the Kyiv prosecutor’s office said that Roman Tkachuk, head of the city’s department of municipal security, which is responsible for the upkeep of bomb shelters, has been placed under a two-month house arrest as part of a criminal investigation into “alleged improper performance of official duties.”

Klitschko, in an interview with The Washington Post, argued it would be “the biggest mistake” to engage in political battles. “People forget who sent the missiles to our hometown and who is guilty,” he said.

Days after the deaths outside the medical clinic, Zelensky tapped Kamyshin to inspect the maze of underground shelters across the capital to make sure they were accessible and suitable for protection against Russian attacks.

It has not gone well.

Using the city’s official map of designated shelters, Kamyshin found the first location locked and unmarked. The second was the back of a theater, where employees said the entrance was always left shuttered and unattended overnight. The third? “Out of order,” read a piece of paper behind a locked gate.

It wasn’t until the fourth stop that officials were actually able to get inside. They stepped into a musty, dimly lit bunker, crammed with cardboard boxes, wires and construction materials. There was hardly space to sit.

Kamyshin shook his head as he snaked through the city’s streets.

He considered Ukraine a world-class model in how to defend a country’s cities, rebuild broken infrastructure and keep a nation moving forward during a brutal invasion. The former CEO of Ukrainian Railways — a critical lifeline and symbol of resilience throughout the war — Kamyshin was perplexed at the inadequacy of such a basic safety net in the country’s capital.

Across Ukraine, about one-third of the country’s 63,000 bomb shelters inspected by authorities were closed or unsuitable for use, the State Emergency Service reported on June 10. But in the nation’s capital, fewer than half the 4,655 shelters were freely accessible, Kamyshin reported after his audit. An additional 21% were reachable within five minutes, often requiring someone to open the entrance.

Only 15% of the shelters were considered “suitable,” Kamyshin wrote.

Kyiv municipal administrators had received 1.2 billion hryvnia, roughly $32.5 million, to upgrade the city’s shelters, but Kamyshin said he did not see any shelters that appeared to have undergone recent repairs. After the deaths at the clinic this month, the Kyiv city council allocated an additional 750 million hryvnia, or about $20 million, to shelter repairs.

Kamyshin appeared frustrated by the political finger-pointing and by the excuses given by some local officials, including difficulty convincing private property owners to properly outfit underground shelters.

“If you want, you’ll always find reasons why it can’t be done,” he said. “But we are a nation that usually says we’ll find a way, not a reason.”

Until recently, underground shelters were required to be open whenever an air siren sounds. But the recent deaths made clear the need to keep them open 24 hours a day, Klitschko said.

Part of the challenge for officials is their limited legislative ability to enforce shelter requirements, Klitschko said. Many officially designated shelters are private businesses, and the city has little leverage to force them to keep their entrances and basements open 24 hours a day. Some private businesses have raised concerns about the costs of hiring an overnight security guard and paying for needed electricity.

City lawmakers in recent weeks have vowed to fix these gaps in existing legislation, which requires new construction projects to provide shelters in the building itself or in a storage room nearby.

Shelters are expected to be located 500 meters from a residential building, Klitschko said. Previously, when most air attacks on Kyiv came from drones, that distance seemed to give residents plenty of time to reach shelter.

But with the recent increase in ballistic missile strikes - such as the deadly attack over the clinic this month - residents often have only a couple of minutes.

“It’s a new challenge for us,” Klitschko said.

In some cases, Klitschko said, fleeing to a shelter outside a resident’s building may not be the safest option. He now recommends the two-wall rule, simply moving as far away as possible from a window. How to decide whether to flee or shelter in place? Klitschko struggled to provide an answer.

“Everyone decides by himself,” he said.

Belchenko, the 33-year-old mother and sushi chef, was following city instructions when she bolted to the shelter on June 1, her husband, Yaroslav Riabchuk, said. She was more diligent than many Kyiv residents, who often sleep through the air alarms or take cover in a bathroom. She had her blanket ready to go, and as soon as the air raid siren echoed across Kyiv at 2:49 a.m., she rushed out of her building with her husband and daughter, Riabchuk said.

“If we had stayed home, everything would have been fine,” he said.

Moments after his wife was killed, Riabchuk found the security guard who had been unable to unlock the shelter’s entrance in time. Enraged, he punched the man in the face. The security guard was later arrested.

But Riabchuk insists the man was not the only one responsible for the failure. Residents had previously complained about the shelter, he said. He recounted a visit from Klitschko to the site days after his wife’s death and said the mayor avoided talking to him. His mother was recorded on video screaming at the mayor.

Kamyshin, the minister charged with inspecting shelters, followed the map to the next location. His team arrived at a closed hookah bar. Its manager, who later caught up with the group, said the bar had not been a city shelter for at least 30 years. He said he had told police long ago to remove it from the map.

At another shelter location, the inspectors used flashlights to step down wet concrete stairs. Once in the basement, a broken door was stored in a corner, and a mattress was pressed up against another wall.

Another location turned out to be a bookstore, where the owner said he leaves a spare key with other building residents when the store is closed. But the owner was not sure whether the basement was accessible overnight.

During an audit of 10 locations on the city map that evening, Kamyshin had not found a single bunker that was both accessible and suitable for use - until the last stop: a school that had hired staff to work overnight. A clearly marked sign outside the school pointed toward a shelter.

“This was the only one,” Kamyshin said.

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The Washington Post’s David L. Stern in Kyiv contributed to this report.