Air raid alerts during shopping center operating hours increases in May – UCTC

The share of the duration of air raid alerts during the operating hours of shopping centers in May 2026 increased by 1.7% compared to April and stands at 17.9%, the Ukrainian Council of Shopping Centers (UCTC) has said.

It is noted that if not for the three-day "truce" on May 9-11, it could have been even higher; nevertheless, it more than doubles last year’s figures. Last year, in May 2025, the share of alerts was 8.1%.

All other indicators studied (number of alerts, number of alerts during shopping center operating hours, duration of alerts, duration of alerts during shopping center operating hours) also deteriorated overall.

The top five regions where air raid alerts sounded most frequently during shopping center operating hours remained unchanged for two consecutive months: Donetsk (79%), Sumy (58%), Zaporizhia (47.4%), Kharkiv (43%), and Chernihiv regions (39%).

Out of this top five, only the Sumy region saw this indicator improve over the month. However, among the regions of Ukraine, it deteriorated most noticeably over the past month in the Kyiv region – from 4.8% to 14.8%.

On average across Ukraine, the forced downtime of shopping centers due to air raid alerts reached 150.7 working days since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, and 4.5 working days in May 2026.

UCTC has been publishing an interactive map of the duration of air raid alerts in the country’s regions since February 24, 2022. The map is updated monthly.

Founded in 2020, UCTC is a non-profit organization uniting key players in the retail real estate market: owners and developers of shopping centers, as well as companies related to the construction and maintenance of shopping and entertainment centers.