Four district administrations in Kyiv city did not respond to Slidstvo.Info‘s queries regarding the state and accessibility of bomb shelters, claiming the information is “classified”, the news outlet reports.
Journalists wrote to all 10 district administrations in the capital as part of a special project on bomb shelters, asking for information on the shelters’ design, namely whether they are equipped with ramps and toilets, as well as their sizes, capacities, and accessibility.
The administrations of the Desnyanskyi, Svyatoshynskyi, Obolonskyi, and Darnytskyi districts did not answer the queries. Neither did the officials respond to the key question: whether the shelters listed by the journalists are accessible for the public.
Meanwhile, Leonid Yemets, chair of the Kyiv City Council’s temporary investigative commission for bomb shelter inspection, says that this information is public and that district administrations have to disclose it.
Oksana Maksymeniuk, a lawyer at the Institute for Regional Press Development, emphasised that official information can only be consdered classfied after it passes the so-called “threefold test”, as required by law. Maksymeniuk said that the district administrations did not sufficiently explain what harm the disclosure of the requested data could cause, which is against the law.
“The state of bomb shelters, whether people can get to them, whether they are equipped with everything necessary for people to stay there for a long time (and the shelling strikes targeting Kyiv are constantly intensifying and last hours) – this information is a matter of the lives and safety of Kyiv residents. Sharing such information cannot be restricted or prohibited,” Maksymeniuk said, adding that withholding such data did more harm than good.
