A rapid inspection of Ukraine's air-raid shelters on June 3 has found that nearly one-quarter of them were either locked or unusable.
The Interior Ministry reported that "over 4,800" shelters had been inspected and 252 were found to be locked, while 893 were deemed "unfit for use."
In a post on Telegram the same day, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the authorities had received "more than 1,000" complaints from the public about locked or inadequate air-raid shelters.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy ordered the audit of all of Ukraine's air-raid shelters after a 9-year-old girl, her mother, and another woman were killed by falling fragments of a missile after being unable to enter a Kyiv shelter that was reportedly locked during a Russian attack.
The deaths caused a public outcry.
Zelenskiy said on June 1 he had ordered the industries minister and his interior minister to conduct a "full audit of bomb shelters."
Police opened a criminal investigation into the three deaths near a medical clinic in the Desnyan district of Kyiv amid intensified Russian attacks on the Ukrainian capital since the start of May.
The Prosecutor-General's Office said four people were detained in connection with the closed shelter of a medical facility. They face criminal charges.
In a video message released late on June 1, Zelenskiy said shelters "must be kept accessible. Never again should we see a repeat of the situation that occurred last night in Kyiv."
He suggested local authorities could be prosecuted for failing to make shelters available to residents.
"If this duty is not fulfilled at the local level, it is the direct duty of law enforcement bodies to prosecute,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video message.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said his government will make sure those who put people are risk due to "their negligence" will be punished.
"The punishment will be severe so that such egregious cases do not happen again," Shmyhal said on June 1.
Officials said they were also auditing shelters in Lviv, Vinnytsya, and Mykolayiv in southern Ukraine.
