City Hall admits that Odesa lacks shelters

The number of shelters in Odesa does not meet the regulatory requirements - the overall provision rate is 62.9%.

This was announced during a staff meeting by Acting Deputy Mayor Volodymyr Krylenko.

He said that work on expanding the fund of protective structures is ongoing and that 35 basements and 12 civil defense structures have already been inspected in March. Of these, seven basements are currently being considered as possible for further activation. In March, two facilities were commissioned (including one last week).

Two of the simplest shelters on the Arcadia Plateau5 (for 50 and 100 people) were included in the fund. Currently, two state-owned basements and 11 communal basements are being prepared.

Earlier, the Center for Public Investigations found out how the situation with shelters in Odesa really is, who should determine their need, and why even in the fourth year of the war the city does not have a clear system. It turned out that out of the 3,696 necessary shelters and 124 mobile shelters available in the city, only 1,189 have not been solved in almost four years of full-scale invasion.

In June 2025, the executive committee determined that the city needed 3,696 shelters and 124 mobile shelters. The Odesa District State Administration received and approved this calculation a week earlier. At the same time, paragraph 2 of the executive committee's decision instructed the Main Directorate of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine to conduct a survey of the territories to identify additional facilities that could be used as dual-purpose structures to shelter the population.

At the request of the CPR to fulfill this instruction, the Main Directorate of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Odesa Oblast advised to contact the Odesa City Military Administration directly, which gives the impression of the formal nature of this provision in the decision. In addition, the city council, at the request of the LRC to provide a list of shelters that actually work, provided not a list but a decision on the need without further explanation.

However, it was only in April 2025, almost two years after the NSDC decision, that the Odesa City Council adopted the decision "On the Fund of Civil Protection Facilities of Odesa", which approved the list of the fund of protective structures in the amount of 1189 units and instructed the Executive Committee to determine the need for the fund of civil protection facilities.

Кирило Бойко