The question of shelters in Odesa remains urgent, even after a year and a half of full-scale war.
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Odesa City Council published information on its website about shelters with capacity for 50,000 people. Where the rest of the residents of a city of a million should shelter from missile strikes and kamikaze drones, however, remains unclear.
The civic organisation Zelenyi Lyst investigated Odesa’s shelters.
Did the Odesa authorities fail to agree on shelters?
In June 2023, we received several responses to information requests from government bodies. We wanted to know who was responsible for calculating the city’s shelter requirements and who approved that calculation. The different institutions gave contradictory answers.
For example, Odesa City Council’s Department of Municipal Security said that “the executive bodies and structural divisions of Odesa City Council determine the needs of the city’s civil protection shelter facilities within their powers, in cooperation with the Odesa District State (Military) Administration”.
At the same time, the Odesa District State (Military) Administration reported that “…no requests or proposals from Odesa City Council or its executive bodies concerning the assessment of the need for civil protection shelters for the population of Odesa had been received by the Odesa District Military Administration”.
Decree of the President of Ukraine No. 353/2023 of 26 June 2023 enacted the decision of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine of 23 June 2023, “On the Results of Rapid Inspections of Civil Protection Shelter Facilities and Addressing Problems in Sheltering the Population”. Work to ensure the readiness of shelter facilities in Odesa was deemed unsatisfactory.
In early July 2023, Zelenyi Lyst received another reply from Odesa City Council’s Department of Municipal Security, stating that the city had shelters (bomb shelters) for 127,000 people — one in every eight residents. Where everyone else should shelter remained unknown.
Unable to reconcile the local authorities’ answers, we sent an appeal to the President of Ukraine.
They respond only when instructed from above
As early as 15 July 2023, following our appeal to the President, the Odesa City Council website published news that 20 mobile teams had been formed in Odesa to inspect premises for use as shelters. As we can see, our information requests and appeal to the President partially achieved their aim: the Odesa authorities noticed the shelter problems and finally responded.
On 21 August, the Odesa Regional Military Administration informed Zelenyi Lyst that shelters for 200,000 city residents were now ready. Facilities for another 50,000 people were due to enter service soon.
Against this backdrop, Operational Command South warned that Russia planned to intensify its tactics of combined strikes in autumn and winter, further targeting critical infrastructure. Meeting the shelter needs of just a quarter of the city’s civilian population is a welcome development, but it is not enough.
There are also the safety classification, accessibility, quality of facilities and self-sufficiency of shelters, which we do not analyse in this article. But we suspect that all is not well on those fronts either.
Another area of work is providing information to children and the city’s civilian population as a whole. This is the responsibility of the local authorities, which, unfortunately, still do not act without public scrutiny or instructions from above.