In Moscow, they are hastily equipping bomb shelters: benches, lanterns, first-aid kits are being brought in. According to Baza, about 900 shelters have already been prepared in one of the metropolitan districts. In recent months, this kind of information periodically slips in district and house chat rooms. Not only in Moscow, but throughout the European territory of Russia. Residents, of course, are interested in where to hide in case of shelling, but the authorities do not give addresses. This is the official position. Here is a typical response from a neighbor-deputy in a house chat in the center of Moscow:
“In case of danger, everyone will be warned. Bomb shelters are strategic objects, and therefore their location is not announced in advance.”
It sounds absurd, but since the adoption of the law "on state secrets" in 1990, the data "on the forces and means of civil defense" are really classified. Officials will break the law if they reveal this secret to the population, criminal lawyer Sergei Tokarev notes:
“Theoretically, any disclosure of the location of bomb shelters is covered by this law. And if any governor or mayor decides to tell the population where they should hide in the event of a bombing, they can in principle be held criminally liable for this.”
Therefore, officials keep this data secret. And not only from ordinary citizens. So, in June of this year, when the prospects for nuclear war were actively discussed in the state media, Evgeny Stupin, a deputy of the Moscow City Duma, asked the Moscow Mayor's Office to provide the addresses of shelters in his constituency and tell what condition they were in. The mayor's office replied that both are state secrets.
According to Stupin (and he is a lawyer), the wording of the law on state secrets allows for different interpretations, and there is no particular secrecy here:
“It probably makes sense to raise this issue at a meeting of the Moscow City Duma. On the other hand, since they decided to remain silent, referring to state secrets, they most likely will not say anything. But in the Soviet Union, everyone knew how to find shelter – there were signs on the walls.
Find shelter
Belgorod human rights activist Yevgeny Sokolov tried so hard to find out anything about local civil defense facilities that he was sued.
“I have 17 months of combat experience in Afghanistan behind me, and I have a good idea of what artillery and mortar shelling is. He hid from them many times. Therefore, when in the spring they began to bait us a little in the Belgorod region, I decided to find out where citizens could hide.
Sokolov sent appeals to the Security Council at the Belgorod City Hall, a similar body under the Governor of the Belgorod Region, and to the regional department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. In response, representatives of the department decided to go to court. There they stated that Sokolov “abused his rights to appeal to state bodies. This is expressed in the intention to harm the reputation of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia in the Belgorod Region through the unfair use of their right to appeal, as well as the lack of the goal of actually protecting one's life and health, violated rights, interests, and the lack of intention to fulfill one's civic duty.
“I abused my rights to appeal to state bodies”
Whatever it means, this is exactly the wording that appears in court documents (a copy is at the disposal of the editors). The Ministry of Emergency Situations set out to recover 50,000 rubles from the human rights activist. But, according to Yevgeny Sokolov, unforeseen circumstances intervened.
“In early July, on the eve of the court decision, a Tochka-U rocket fell three hundred meters from the court. Destroyed several private houses, people died. As a result, everything became clear to the judge, and he ruled in my favor. But the Ministry of Emergency Situations did not come to their senses. In court, my representative and I once again asked them where we should hide in the event of rocket and artillery attacks. They said: “We have bomb shelters, but we won’t tell you about them, because it’s a big, big secret.”
It is curious that the regime of state secrets in itself will not go anywhere even in the event of an official start of hostilities, Sokolov notes:
“Even the introduction of martial law does not make this secret information unclassified and does not allow the public to be told the addresses of civil defense facilities. There must be a separate order for this. Now in the regions that, according to Russian law, were annexed to Russia this fall, martial law is in effect. But at the same time, I am not aware of any orders that would allow the publication of the addresses of shelters in these territories.
Indeed, a search on the site of the Kherson Russian administration recently created in the .ru zone does not provide any information about bomb shelters.
“Setting out to find out where we could hide, I went to the basements of our management company, and it turned out that no one there was absolutely ready. The keys to the cellars were not immediately found, they were with my grandmother, who was on duty in the elevators. And, of course, no one knew where to save themselves.
Vladimir Ryazansky, co-chairman of the Russian Housing Federation, explains that ordinary management companies in Moscow (regional state budgetary institution Zhilischnik and, moreover, commercial ones) do not deal with shelters:
“The civil defense and emergency departments under the administrations are responsible for them, and they are served by special military management organizations (GUZhF and GUOV). In other regions, in different ways, ordinary managing organizations can also serve: at the discretion of the governors' administration, according to the relevant state order. The keys to the shelters are usually stored in 24-hour emergency dispatch services located within walking distance of the homes they serve. There they are, in which case, and it is necessary to look for them.
There are also some civil defense and emergency response centers in different parts of Moscow. As a result, Moscow deputy Yevgeny Stupin went to one of these, on the territory of his district:
“They told me that there are simply no civil defense facilities in this area – Nekrasovka. If we talk about my constituency, then only the quarters that were built up under the USSR are more or less provided with bomb shelters. Now these underground facilities house parking lots and car services. So residents will be able to hide at X hour, if, of course, these services let them in.”
16 thousand unknown
“Built-in non-residential premises No. 1001 (shelter) … The initial amount of the annual rent is 372,610.0 rubles,” this is how an ordinary auction announcement looks on the website of one of the Russian cities. Yes, bomb shelters in Russia are freely rented out. In this case, the administration proposes to adapt the civil defense facility for an atelier, workshop, reception center, or use it as a place for cultural, educational or sports activities. It is also allowed to equip shelters for shops, cafes, factories (with some restrictions), warehouses and parking lots. If necessary, you can even put temporary partitions inside. So the auction is completely legal.
How many bomb shelters there are in Russia, no one really knows. The latest figures were published in 2016 by the Accounts Chamber. Inspectors then counted 16448 pieces throughout the country, and their number was constantly decreasing. Since 2013 alone, shelters have decreased by 9%. Although, in theory, developers are still obliged to build them together with new areas.
As Igor Petrov, head of the Genpro general design bureau, notes, the requirements for the creation of civil defense and emergency facilities have always existed and still exist today:
“As part of the development of territorial planning projects, it is planned to place such structures, for the implementation of which the relevant department issues technical specifications. In addition, if a building is demolished within which a civil defense and emergency facility was located, the developer is obliged to build a similar facility within the framework of a new building, the implementation of which is provided for on this site.
Another noteworthy point from the report of the Accounts Chamber: 95% of civil defense facilities built before 1993 were, according to the inspectors, in an unsatisfactory condition.
The condition of 95% of civil defense facilities built before 1993 was recognized as unsatisfactory
A rough idea of this state can be made from the numerous reports of diggers: dirt, everything is broken and pulled apart, the doors are torn off. Sometimes in parts of the premises there is a sluggish repair. About the same thing is regularly described by journalists, because a trip to bomb shelters is a frequent plot of a city report. There are no addresses in such sources, since diggers prefer to keep their objects secret, and journalists are afraid of breaking the law. So just don't check this information.
Since citizens are not allowed into secret bomb shelters, and the Ministry of Emergency Situations does not receive feedback from them, the department came up with an original way to somehow control the state of these structures. In all regions of Russia, since 1996, a beauty contest among civil defense facilities has been regularly held.
In all regions of Russia, since 1996, a “beauty contest” has been regularly held among civil defense facilities.
Under the terms of the competition, a bomb shelter can score 3,000 points, but they are removed for each malfunction. For example, on a broken hermetic door, you can lose 10 victory points, and for a missing life support unit, 60 points will be removed. An idle diesel power plant is another minus 200 points, a broken toilet bowl is minus 20. Apparently, not a single object gains all 3000 points (or whatever something like that). Which of all received the least criticism, he wins. For example, in 2019, in the Eastern District of Moscow, the shelter at CHPP-11 turned out to be the best.
How it should be: the experience of Israel
According to Israeli military expert Sergei Migdal, the classification of bomb shelters is still a Soviet atavism:
“For the people who are now in power in Russia, the USSR with its state secrets and secrecy is a favorite time. In Israel, it never occurs to anyone to hide bomb shelters from people. Their addresses are on special sites. And in the event of any escalation that could lead to rocket attacks, people are told on TV where to look for this information. All residents have special applications on their phones that warn of missile launches and give addresses of the nearest shelters.
Migdal emphasizes that all large city underground parking lots are dual-use premises:
“There are supplies of water and food, toilets on every floor. Employees of organizations that include parking lots and the IDF Logistics Service are responsible for their condition. Checks are periodically carried out, I myself participated in them when I worked in the police. Shortcomings were identified, but not in the sense that everything was broken and taken away, but in the fact that somewhere food stocks had not been updated for a long time or some kind of door did not open well. Bomb shelters under apartment buildings are run by the council of tenants, they also keep the keys.”
Moreover, in every modern apartment there are special security rooms – rooms made of durable concrete with a tight-closing door and thick steel shutters. Practice shows that even with a direct hit by rockets on houses, residents hiding in security rooms get off with a maximum of shell shock.
Near the roads, you can sometimes see special factory-made concrete shelters, where passengers of buses and cars can quickly hide. Recently, such structures have appeared in Ukraine.
According to Sergei Migdal, a light metro is currently being built in Tel Aviv, and its underground stations will also become part of the civil defense system. “By the way, the Ukrainian experience has shown that the Soviet deep-laid subway copes with this task perfectly,” says Migdal.
The Soviet deep underground perfectly copes with the task of civil defense
But, as it turned out recently, even the metro is not a panacea. After deputy Yevgeny Stupin was told that there were no bomb shelters in the Nekrasovka district, Dmitry Shuvalov, a municipal deputy of this district, decided to find out if it was possible to hide in the subway. And he received an official answer: “The Nekrasovka metro station is not suitable for sheltering the population during a special period.”
Yevgeny Stupin says that there "are no water supplies for three days, no filtration systems, no toilets for the sheltered."
Reorganize and mobilize
The head of survival courses in Belgorod, former commando Roman Lisitsyn, told The Insider:
“Next to the place where that “Tochka-U” fell in July, there is a nine-story building in which one of my former students lives. He was the only one who immediately got his bearings, led the family to a safe place – to the flight of stairs. And when many neighbors were injured by glass fragments, he gave them first aid.
According to Lisitsyn, over the past six months, the interest of his countrymen in survival skills and tactical medicine has grown many times over. This fall, 2-3 times more people want to get into the corresponding courses than in the spring, when people watched the fighting from the side and were sure that this would definitely not affect them.
“The turning point was just that shelling in July. After that, the authorities began to prepare: benches and water in eggplants were brought to the cellars and shelters. Active residents were able to make copies of the keys. But it's better to take care of everything yourself. Our five-story building also has a basement, and I brought canned food, tools, water, warm clothes there.
Another question is when to go down to this shelter. The problem is that although air defense in Belgorod periodically works, no one has turned on the alarm siren yet, the expert notes:
“The siren is working, I heard it during the exercises. Apparently, the authorities are simply trying to avoid panic. But this is strange, because explosions are already heard by everyone. The city is small, there is a roar, as during fireworks. So I write in all chats and groups: turn on the air raid alert already. I want to know for myself that there is danger, and I will decide for myself how to behave.
In support of his words, Roman shows several videos. Explosions rumble in Belgorod at night, and the sirens are silent:
“Actually, it’s only 30 kilometers from us to the border, and we have to be ready all the time. You can no longer just wander around the city and look around. We need to keep an eye on shelters everywhere: here is a ditch, here is a curb, here is the entrance to the basement, where you can dart in in case of shelling. All of us must now readjust and be ready.”