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The West could lift Ukraine’s long-range missile restrictions any day now. Are Russia’s civilian bomb shelters ready?

Source: Meduza

Ukraine is likely to receive approval from its Western allies to use long-range weapons on targets deep in Russian territory in the near future. If this happens, the risk of missile strikes could become a new reality not just for residents of Russia’s border regions but also for the millions of people living in Central Russia. But despite this looming prospect, the Russian authorities have been extremely reluctant to share information about the locations of bomb shelters where civilians could hide from incoming missile fire. Nonetheless, official sources do contain some basic information about Russia’s bomb shelters and the government’s responsibilities in the case that they become necessary. Meduza examined these sources to find out as much as we could about what options Russian civilians who come under fire might have for protecting themselves. Here’s what we learned.

Millions of people in Ukraine have been living under constant Russian bombing since February 2022. An up-to-date map of bomb shelters in Ukraine is available through the official government services app Diia, and lists of shelters in specific regions can be found online.

What formal responsibilities do the Russian authorities have to protect civilians from strikes?

A 1991 law titled “On Civil Defense” requires the Russian government to organize and provide for the defense of civilians, specifically by determining a procedure for creating bomb shelters. A decree laying out this procedure was passed in November 1999 and signed by none other than Vladimir Putin, who was Russia’s prime minister at the time.

The most recent changes to the procedure for creating civil defense structures came in 2019, three years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For those two decades, the Russian federal authorities only maintained the infrastructure to protect a small portion of the country’s population in the event of an attack: employees of organizations fulfilling defense production contracts, hospital workers, and patients who couldn’t be evacuated.

Five years later, the situation appears largely unchanged. “…Only a portion of the population working during wartime would be protected,” Russia’s Emergency Services Ministry acknowledged in 2024.

Protecting the rest of the population falls to the local authorities, who have various amounts of dedicated protective structures as well as adapted underground facilities (such as metro systems and basements) as shelters. In 2024, the Emergency Situations Ministry stated that the local authorities almost always opt for the latter, as they “consider it the most cost-effective option” compared to maintaining civil defense shelters.

Still, there are far from enough shelters and protection structures to accommodate everyone, and not every basement can be adapted to meet the standards for civil defense shelters.

How many defensive structures does Russia have?

A report from the Russian Accounts Chamber published in 2016 mentioned 16,448 defensive structures throughout Russia. It also noted that:

It’s unclear how many of Russia’s civil defense structures would be equipped to shelter people from bombing or missile fire today. From 1992 to 2022, the only institution specializing in maintaining these structures on the national level was a federal state unitary enterprise called Ekran. According to the website of its successor, a joint-stock company with the same name, the organization has repaired and restored only 45 protective structures in the last decade.

Are the Russian authorities really not planning to protect civilians from missile strikes?

They are — but they’ve been exceedingly tight-lipped about these plans.

After the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry published a draft decree to amend the official procedure for “creating shelters and other civil defense facilities.” In an explanatory note, the agency referred to instructions issued after a Russian Security Council meeting on “improving defense in light of the experience of the special military operation” held on November 10, 2022.

The amendment is set to change the authorities’ approach to accounting for “underground structures” that can be adapted into bomb shelters. While these facilities previously had to meet the standards of civil defense structures, they’re now classified as a separate category of facility and are required to “provide necessary protection from conventional weapons and debris in the event that the floors above collapse.”

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This new category would include:

However, not every facility that falls into these categories will be considered a civil defense structure. The new regulations require buildings to have a minimum number of floors and a minimum ceiling thickness, depending on construction materials. They also have to meet other conditions, such as having two exits located on opposite sides.

Some Russian cities have already begun integrating underground civilian infrastructure into their civil defense facilities. For example, authorities in Novosibirsk added the addresses of 2,362 underground spaces to an online map of potential shelters.

Are bomb shelters and converted civilian facilities the only protective structures available?

No. The new amendments also allow for the creation of above-ground “modular protective structures,” which the Emergency Situations Ministry says have “several advantages over permanent facilities,” including “mobility” and “a variety of placement options within a limited area.”

In October 2023, the Emergency Situations Ministry’s Research Institute for Civil Defense and Emergencies showcased a new modular shelter called KUB-M. The structure can accommodate between 54 and 150 people.

“The demand for the [new structure] is clear from the fact that dozens of applications have already been received from organizations wishing to order the KUB-M. More than 1,000 of the protective structures have been ordered in various regions of Russia,” the institute says on its website.

In practice, however, it’s mainly just simpler shelters, capable only of protecting against drone attacks, that are being installed in Russian regions. Several hundred of these facilities have already been set up in the Belgorod region, and dozens have been installed in the Kursk region. Modular shelters have also begun appearing in areas hundreds of kilometers away from the Russian-Ukrainian border.