The Ombudsman inspected shelters in Ukraine and declared a critical situation
The Office of the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights inspected over a thousand shelters that are marked as accessible to the public in the “Diya” system. According to the results of the inspection, only 80 facilities received no comments regarding their condition or suitability for shelter.
The monitoring covered 1,066 shelters that “Diya” marks as accessible to the public. The results showed that 993 facilities—or 93%—had deficiencies. In total, representatives of the Ombudsman’s Office issued 3,996 recommendations for improving the condition of the shelters: an average of 4.5 recommendations per shelter.
Separately, it turned out that 80 shelters were effectively unusable at the time of the inspection—despite the fact that they were listed as open in “Diya.”
“A person would run there during an alarm and find a locked door or—as we discovered—a basement that was completely unsafe. In principle, it was impossible to go down there,” Lubinets stated.
The highest number of non-functional shelters was found in Lviv Oblast, Kyiv, as well as in Zhytomyr, Kyiv, and Kharkiv Oblasts. The highest average number of recommendations per facility was recorded in Zakarpattia Oblast—9.2. Among the regions most frequently targeted by attacks, shelters in Kherson (5.4), Zaporizhzhia (4.6), Kyiv, and Odesa Oblasts (4.1 each) received the most comments.
The worst conditions are found in the simplest shelters: basements of residential buildings managed by homeowners’ associations or private companies. They have virtually no funding and are often left without proper oversight.
As of early 2026, Ukraine has 66,574 shelters of various types with a total capacity of about 16.5 million people—nearly three times more than before the full-scale invasion. However, there is a vast gap between the statistics and reality.
According to Lubinets, in 2025 the state allocated 6.2 billion UAH for school shelters, in 2026—5 billion UAH, and over 6 billion UAH from the reserve fund was directed toward critical infrastructure. But there is no state funding at all for publicly accessible shelters—those where people run from the street during an alarm. Homeowners’ associations are forced to fulfill the function of state protection at their own expense.
This information is available on Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets’ Facebook page.
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