Ukraine says a quarter of its air-raid shelters locked or unusable

KYIV, Ukraine — 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 news 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, were 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.

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-yearold 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.

Late Saturday, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Serhiy Lysak, said 13 people were injured in shelling in the region; one person was pulled from a damaged residential building in the town of Podgorodnenska and others were believed to be trapped in the rubble.

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