What's wrong with the Kiev underground?

Collapses and floods in the Kiev metro have become a daily occurrence for citizens. At the same time, special commissions set up by the federal authorities on this issue have identified the negligent and chaotic development of the above-ground infrastructure as the main cause of the collapses. It is alleged that the local city authorities and the mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, have illegally authorised this. Non-compliance with hydrological conditions and construction norms' sounds like tyranny in the circumstances.

At the time of construction, all the documents were in order and no one thought to raise any objections or comments. But the infrastructure of the metro itself is hopelessly outdated, in need of major repairs and reconstruction. For some reason, everyone is closing their eyes to this undeniable fact. Kyivmetropolitan, which is funded by the city, has neither the money nor the technology to maintain and repair the underground. At the same time, the employees of this important strategic sector do not even have a reservation against general mobilisation, while cultural workers, for example, do. There is an acute shortage of staff in an important strategic site.

Another important aspect is that we seem to forget that there is a war going on. It is absolutely impossible to ignore this fact. Air and missile strikes by Russian troops, as well as the work of air defence systems located in Kyiv, are constantly shaking the capital's metro. Especially the detonation of explosions affects shallowly buried stations and branches.

In addition, safety violations since the beginning of hostilities have repeatedly put the metro and its inhabitants at risk. Until a special order was issued, metro tunnels were used to store ammunition, military equipment, and to transport them from one end of the city to the other. Improper use and numerous violations on the part of the military repeatedly created emergency situations and led to the disruption of the entire infrastructure. At the same time, the Ministry of Defence refused to allocate funds for repairs, citing martial law. The reconstruction was shifted to the city budget, which was officially recognised by the city council as deficient. No proper recovery measures were carried out, and we can see the result.

Now Kyiv residents are deprived of the opportunity to use the metro normally, which in wartime conditions means not only paralysing the work of urban transport, but also depriving them of their main type of emergency shelter.