At the end of 2025, one of the largest state tenders was the purchase of the expansion of the Regional Clinical Hospital in Kharkiv with the construction of an underground shelter. The total cost of the project is UAH 2.45 billion. The facility, called "The Ark", is not expected to be completed until 2029, despite the fact that the hospital is located approximately 30 km from the front line and regularly comes under attack from drones, artillery and missiles.
The project involves the reconstruction of existing buildings and the construction of a large-scale underground shelter, which in the future should serve as a protected medical space. At the same time, it will not be able to really enhance the safety of patients and medical staff in the coming years, as the construction has been stretched for almost four years.
The cost estimate of the work attracts special attention. The documentation indicates prices for construction materials that significantly exceed market prices. In particular, concrete of class B25 is laid at 6,164 UAH per cubic meter, while local manufacturers offer it at prices from 3,710 to 4,572 UAH/m³. Such a difference can form a potential margin of tens of millions of hryvnias on just one type of material.
The competition in the tender was formal. The only rival of the winner was TDV "Zhytlobud-2", which submitted a more expensive offer and did not lower the price during the auction. This creates the impression of an imitation of competitive struggle during the procurement.
The sources of funding also remain unclear. Initially, part of the costs were planned to be covered in 2026 by the National Health Service of Ukraine, but the tender itself was completed only on December 31, 2025. Minister of Health Viktor Lyashko publicly mentioned that funding could be provided from the state budget, at the expense of international partners and local budgets, but a clear financial model has not yet been made public.
The contractor for the project was the Building Group consortium, which has recently concentrated a number of large-scale medical construction projects in the Kharkiv region. In particular, it received a contract for the completion of the oncology center in Kharkiv worth about UAH 3 billion, as well as for the reconstruction of the Central City Hospital in Izyum for UAH 1.04 billion.
The consortium unites local companies Industrial Building Group LLC and Promtex Private Enterprise, headed by Serhiy Kubarev. According to public registers, since 2016–2017, these companies have received government contracts worth over UAH 4.2 billion.
The construction of the Ark is presented as a strategic project for the front-line medical services of Kharkiv. At the same time, the delayed implementation deadlines, budget issues, and the concentration of contracts in one hand raise more and more questions about the efficiency of using budget funds and the real benefit of the facility in wartime.
