Poland's race to close shelter gap amid Russian threats

Earlier this summer, I visited the premises of a construction firm in central Poland that had started building private family shelters in 2022, just a few months after Russia invaded Ukraine.

In a car park behind the company's factory stood three large, black cylinders. To the uninitiated, they looked like large water tanks.

The cylindrical objects were modular shelters that the company installs underneath people's houses or gardens.

Measuring eight metres in length and made from high density polyethylene, the units are designed to provide a family of four to six people with a safe, underground space to hide in the event of an emergency.

"We see a high increase of inquiries, but from the people who don't know what they are looking for," said Jakub Ratajczyk, who runs Emer Security Shelters with his father Jarosław in their hometown of Łask.

It is one of a number of companies in Poland building private shelters to meet demand from high-income earners who worry about increasing tensions with Russia.

Most callers want to know how long they can survive in the shelter.

It is possible to live for a few weeks in the shelter, said Jakub, but it depends on how much food and water supplies people have stocked.

The unit is fitted with a toilet and shower, two bunk beds, a sofa that sleeps two more people, an air filtration system, a water storage tank, a cooking unit that can be powered by batteries or an external source, and a television point.

At the back, there is an emergency escape hatch just in case the front entrance is blocked.

It is a tight space, and four people could find it challenging to spend several weeks inside. More so, the units are designed for people to hide out for up to a dozen hours until the danger has passed.

The model I was shown has a starting price of about €80,000 before tax and the costs increase depending on the kinds of gadgets customers would like to be fitted inside the shelter. The cost of installing the structure under a house or garden can also vary depending on the terrain.

The firm's clients prefer not to publicise their purchase of a home shelter either. Most people opt for secrecy and ask that entrances to the subterranean shelter be concealed by flower beds or a patio.

"Some people even joke that it is very good place for wine bottle storage," said Jakub.

'We aren't ready'

Even those who buy one of the units hope that they will not have to use it for a real emergency one day.

"Unfortunately, we aren't ready," said Jarosław, the father, when I asked him if he thought Poland is prepared for a real emergency.

"We have far too few places that we can designate for the protection of the population," he said.

The Polish government and state institutions face a gargantuan task to quickly build more shelters for the country's residents amid a climate of hybrid threats from Russia and the threat of drones straying over the border from Ukraine.

And very few people will be able to afford their own shelter.

According to a report in 2024 by Poland’s Supreme Audit Office, the country only has enough shelters and protective hiding places for about 4% of its population.

Fewer than 1% of those spaces are hermetically sealed with an in-built ventilation system.

Cold War-era shelters still exist in Poland, but most are defunct spaces found underneath schools, old apartment blocks and public buildings.

After the 1980s and the end of the Cold War, no new public shelters were built.

The private sector fared no better. For most of the past 30 years, Poland's housing boom took place without developers being required to incorporate shelter facilities into new buildings.

But that is now changing.

A series of suspected Russian drone incursions in Poland a year ago this week spurred greater urgency to expand the number of usable shelter facilities in the country.

New legislation introduced by the government at the start of this year requires developers to construct underground shelters for large residential buildings and public buildings.

These facilities do not necessarily need to be sealed bomb shelters, but developers need to at least plan for underground garages and spaces that provide temporary shelter.

Authorities have calculated that there are enough tunnels, basements and underground garages in the country to provide a form of temporary shelter for almost 24 million residents, more than half the population.

Those temporary shelters can be found on an interactive map that the Polish government launched earlier this year.

Even before last September’s drone incursions the government had set aside almost €4bn in public funding for 2025 to build new shelters and modernise old ones, and the roughly same funding for this year.

In the capital Warsaw, city authorities announced last December that they would adapt the capital's metro stations to accommodate 100,000 people in an emergency. (Warsaw has a population of almost two million inhabitants).

Another city authority that I contacted said that it was in the process of assessing and inspecting sites and was about to commission detailed expert assessments of buildings that previously served as shelters.

That chimes with the government's plan of prioritising the renovation of old structures first before building new public shelters.

"We are aware that we may not begin construction of new shelters this year, but we will begin designing them," Poland's deputy interior minister Wiesław Leśniakiewicz told a parliamentary committee hearing in February.

"Regulations regarding the design of protective structures have been issued. Designers know how to do this," he said.

Poland's current low level of shelter facilities is in stark contrast to Finland, where about 85% of residents have access to a purpose-built underground shelter.

The country operates a system of 50,000 civil defence shelters, the largest of which also operate as sports facilities and children's play areas meaning they have a dual purpose.

Planning for shelter construction is a legal requirement in Finland for large residential buildings and offices.

Many shelter facilities built under apartment blocks are managed by building owners.

In Sweden, there are shelter facilities for close to 70% of residents.

Denmark and Norway also have established shelter systems for more than half of their populations.

Both Finland and Sweden joined NATO in 2023 in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and despite their previous long-standing neutrality, the two countries had continued to build underground public shelters in the years following the end of the Cold War.

"The shelter is integrated into the building design from the earliest project phases because it affects structural engineering, space planning, ventilation systems and building costs," said Erkko Kiviluoma, a design and production director at YIT, one of Finland’s largest construction firms.

The company builds residential civil defence shelters, including reinforced concrete shelters that are integrated into apartment buildings.

Shelter structures, said Mr Kiviluoma, must be able to "withstand blast pressure, debris, building collapse loads, radiation effects and hazardous airborne substances".

Finnish shelters are equipped with dedicated ventilation systems capable of filtering contaminated air and maintaining safe conditions for those inside.

Mr Kiviluoma said that the Finnish shelter system was not created quickly and took decades of legislation and the implementation of technical standards.

Likewise, modernising Poland’s civil defence infrastructure will not be achieved in a few years.

It is a decades-long project that has broad political backing.

The next few years will bring an upgrade of older facilities in many public buildings, and the private sector wants to get in on the act.

"The time for complacency is over. We need to wake up, but this also requires preparation and resources, commitment and coordination between many entities and many institutions," said Jarosław Ratajczyk as we spoke next to one of his firm’s soon-to-be-fitted private shelters.

"We still have a very long way to go before we can turn the situation around."