At the time of the full-scale invasion of Russia, there were not enough bomb shelters in Ukraine. Despite the fact that in previous years, when the military conflict continued mostly in the east of the country, the authorities were engaged in arranging shelters, but it turned out not to be enough.

In 2022, all massive repairs were paused. Schools switched to online education. In 2023, in the rear regions, which is Kirovohrad, more and more parents advocated offline education. There are many reasons for this: children do not learn the material online well, the Internet connection is not good everywhere, parents have to go to work. Therefore, shelters in educational institutions have begun to be arranged in the case of an air raid.

At the beginning of the year, the Cabinet of Ministers even allocated one and a half billion hryvnias to communities for specialized anti-radiation shelters. Kirovohrad region received 31 million of them for the arrangement of storage facilities in 15 educational institutions of the region. However, as our research showed, due to a series of bureaucratic hurdles and officials’ procrastination, repair work in the shelters were to start only at the end of autumn.

On the one hand, there is a justification for this – tender procedures are preceded by additional bureaucratic measures: production of project documentation, its examination, agreement on additional issues arising as part of repairs. Yet, given the constant missile attacks by Russia, which does not shy away from shelling civilian infrastructure, officials should be more prompt in ordering construction works.