Kyiv spent almost €4.7 million of budget funds on maintaining a boarding school that hasn’t had a single child for three years

Since the start of the full-scale conflict in February 2022, children from the Zaporizhzhia orphanage “Solnyshko” (“Little Sun”) were evacuated to Lviv region.

The institution effectively stopped fulfilling its functions, yet the staff remained in place and continued to receive salaries and bonuses.

Over more than three years, the state has spent more than 230 million hryvnias (about $5.5 million) on maintaining the empty orphanage. Almost the entire sum — 212 million hryvnias (around $5 million) — went to staff salaries.

Formally, the management of “Solnyshko” and the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration justify this policy as necessary to “preserve personnel” in case the children return. In practice, however, the orphanage has been without residents all this time, while budget expenditures continued to grow.

Experts note that the situation raises questions not only about the appropriateness of such spending but also about oversight of state funds during wartime. Critics point out that while Ukraine’s budget is under enormous strain, millions of hryvnias are being spent on maintaining empty social institutions.

The scandal around the Zaporizhzhia orphanage has become yet another example of how the education and social welfare system accumulates “frozen” expenses that bring no tangible benefit to society.