Key facts
- Red-level alerts made up 36.7% of total alert duration in October, down from 39.1% in September, per the UCSC.
- Shopping centers lost an average of 9.8 working days nationwide in October 2026 because of air raid alerts, the UCSC said.
- Cumulative average downtime since February 2022 reached 186.3 working days per shopping center, according to the UCSC.
- Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Chernihiv and Kharkiv oblasts had the highest share of opening hours hit by alerts, the UCSC said.
- Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi oblasts were least affected, with alerts under 3% of scheduled opening hours in October.
Air raid alerts forced shopping centers across Ukraine to suspend operations for 32.5% of their scheduled opening hours in October 2026, a record share, the Ukrainian Council of Shopping Centers said. The figure was up 1.7 percentage points from September and almost three times the 12.2% recorded in October 2025.
The council's figures cover standard operating hours of 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. local time. Red-level alerts, which signal a missile, combined missile-and-drone or large-scale drone attack, accounted for 36.7% of total alert duration in October, compared with 39.1% in September.
On September 3, Ukraine's government introduced a two-tier alert system. A yellow alert indicates a drone threat, and businesses may keep operating during it if suitable shelters are available. During a red alert, businesses must suspend operations and move staff and visitors to shelters.
The security situation deteriorated most in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and in several western and central regions, including Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, Volyn, Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr oblasts, the council said. Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Chernihiv and Kharkiv oblasts had the highest share of opening hours affected, unchanged from before. The council recorded improvements in Cherkasy, Poltava, Odesa and Kherson oblasts and in Kyiv. Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi oblasts remained least affected, with alerts under 3% of scheduled opening hours.
Nationwide, shopping centers lost an average of 9.8 working days in October 2026 because of alerts. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, average cumulative downtime has reached 186.3 working days per shopping center, the council said.