Air raid alerts ate a third of mall hours: record 32.5% in October and almost 10 days lost

A new record

The Ukrainian Council of Shopping Centres published survey data showing that in October 2026 the share of air raid alert time within shopping centres’ working hours “broke the record once again”, reaching 32.5%. That is 1.7 percentage points more than in September. A year earlier, in October 2025, it was 12.2%.

All the indicators the council tracks rose during the month: the number of alerts, the number during mall hours, their total duration and their duration during working hours.

Where it is worst

The situation deteriorated most in Dnipropetrovsk region and in western and central regions — Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, Volyn, Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr. Noticeable improvement was recorded in Cherkasy, Poltava, Odesa and Kherson regions and in Kyiv. Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi regions remain the least affected, with alerts taking less than 3% of mall hours.

The top five regions for alerts between 10:00 and 21:00 did not change: Donetsk (96.5% of the time), Zaporizhzhia (85.0%), Sumy (76.4%), Chernihiv (76.4%) and Kharkiv (62.2%).

What business loses

On average across Ukraine, forced downtime of shopping centres due to alerts amounted to 9.8 working days in October and 186.3 working days since the start of the full-scale invasion.

Context

In October industrial companies also gave cautious assessments of their activity and expected fewer new orders, while builders were the most pessimistic about business activity.

Why it matters

Alerts are not only about safety but also about the economy: retail, services and their staff lose working hours and revenue. The growing share of alert time even in central and western regions shows Russia is widening the geography of its attacks.