9 Lessons from Ukraine for Institutional Real Estate Investors

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Are your Assets Ready for War?

Contingency Planning for Commercial Real Estate Investors and Asset Managers in Eastern Europe

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We talked to owners of large commercial facilities in Ukraine struck by Russian missiles, interviewed their teams, visited destroyed sites, and documented what they did before the attacks, what actually helped during the strike, and what they plan to do differently next time.

The result is a set of practical, non-theoretical lessons European institutional owners should adopt now.

Get in contact with Staunton Partners if you want a copy of the full report.

Staunton Partners in 2025 visited large shopping malls and offices in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa that have been damaged by Russian drones, rockets or sabotage.

We were accompanied by an institutional asset owner and client from New York. Their portfolio contains retail & hospitality assets in Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, Bratislava and Prague worth hundreds of millions of euros.

Staunton Partners is engaged in setting up protocols and systems for protecting our client's assets against any contingency. 

Institutional Real Estate Investors in Ukraine and Asset Managers in Eastern Europe; this is a checklist you should read.

Large-scale real estate assets worth billions of euros across Europe sit vulnerable to missile strikes, long-range drones, cyber interference, and crypto-motivated sabotage. Warehouses, logistics centres, office blocks and IT parks all have different vulnerability profiles—but all share the same single point of failure: peacetime assumptions.

Vladimir Putin's criminally indicted regime is constantly threatening European countries who support Ukraine in their battle against genocidal invasion. Especially Poland and the Baltic States.

Moreover, Russian hybrid warfare is already in Europe. The largest shopping centre in Poland, Marywilska 44 market in Warsaw, suffered a massive fire in May 2024, with Polish officials alleging it was an arson attack orchestrated by Russian intelligence.

Russian Shahed 136 drones are fired in their hundreds at Ukraine every night. Their 1000 km range means much of Eastern and Northern Europe is potentially at risk should the four year war escalate and spread further West.

What important learnings have Staunton Partners gathered for our Institutional Investor clients in Ukraine and Eastern Europe?

Rule 1: Fire-Fighting Assets Must Be On-Premises

In Ukraine, assets that survived initial damage almost always had internal fire response capability ready within minutes. Municipal fire services were often delayed or overloaded.

What this means for Poland & the Baltics: Assume municipal response capacity will be diverted—whether due to a targeted attack or simple overload. You need to fight fire yourself for the first 20–40 minutes.

Minimum requirements

• Mobile water tanks on site (5,000–20,000 litres depending on GLA).

• High-pressure hoses with on-site training.

• Dry standpipes regularly tested.

• Agreements with private firefighting units (common in Ukraine post-2022).

  
  

Example (Ukraine, 2023) for Institutional Real Estate Investors in Ukraine:

A Kyiv logistics warehouse (38,000 sqm) survived a Shahed drone strike because the tenant had pre-positioned 4 mobile water tanks, allowing suppression before the fire spread. Adjacent facilities without tanks burned completely.

Sources:

• Ukraine State Emergency Service (DSNS)

• Kyiv School of Economics (KSE)

Rule 2: Evacuation and Shelter Facilities Are a Legal & Operational Necessity

Shelters are not optional in wartime—they determine whether staff return to work after the first air alert.

Observed from Ukraine

• Office buildings with comfortable, heated, ventilated shelters preserved tenancy even during prolonged air raid seasons.

• Assets without adequate shelters saw drop-offs in occupancy of 30–50% during heavy attack periods.

What you should have

• Shelters sized at 10–15% of peak building occupancy.

• Ventilation capable of 2–3 hours of sealed operation.

• Toilets, water, communications repeaters, and Wi-Fi.

A safe workforce is a returning workforce.

Sources:

• UN IOM Business Resilience Surveys (2022–2024)

• EBA Ukraine: CEO War Impact Surveys

Rule 3: Power Supplies Must Be Hardened and Partially Off-Grid

Does your sprinkler system rely on mains electricity? What happens when your city’s power station is hit?

In Ukraine, over 70% of major attacks in 2022–2024 targeted energy infrastructure (source: Ukrainian Ministry of Energy). Cities like Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, and Odesa experience 20–30 scheduled or emergency outages per month during winter (DSNS + Ukrenergo).

Your minimum requirement

• Dedicated transformer

• Industrial-scale generator

• Fuel reserve (24 hours minimum; 48 hours best practice)

• UPS for:

  • Sprinklers

  • Fire pumps

  • Access control & CCTV

  • Lifts (evacuation readiness)

  • Tenant servers

Generator rule of thumb (Ukraine-tested):

A logistics centre needs 1 MW per 20–25k sqm to maintain safe operations. An office building needs 0.4–0.6 MW per 10k sqm for partial operations.

Market risk:

In Ukraine, generator prices tripled within three weeks after the first mass blackout of October 2022 (source: UkrBizInfo, 2022).

If conflict risk materialises in the Baltics or Poland, supply will evaporate overnight.

Rule 4: Distinguish Between Surviving Air Attack & Continuing Operations

Survival is not enough. Your investors expect operational continuity.

In Ukraine, the buildings that stayed operational had:

• Redundant fibre lines

• Satellite backup (Starlink)

• Diesel reserves

• Full BMS automation linked to backup power

• Contracted rapid-response engineering teams

Tenants paid rent because they could still function.

Rule 5: Security Protocols Must Assume Russian Hybrid Threats

Russian intelligence excels at recruiting vulnerable individuals—students, pensioners, gambling addicts, people in debt—to plant explosive or incendiary devices. Many receive $100–$300 in USDT in exchange for placing a parcel in a retail centre.

This is not theoretical. Hundreds of such cases are documented by the SBU and Ukrainian Police.

Your action plan

• Entry checkpoints with randomised checks

• Visible security presence

• Regular sweeps of:

  • Service corridors

  • Car parks

  • Loading bays

• Staff awareness training (Ukraine’s “Don’t Deliver Packages for Strangers” campaign)

• Tenant briefings every quarter

• Incident reporting protocol with local police

Sources:

• SBU counter-terrorism statistics, 2023–2024

• Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, press releases

Rule 6: Cyber-Physical Security Integration for Institutional Real Estate Investors

Cyber attacks often precede kinetic strikes. In Ukraine, attacks on:

• access control servers,

• fire panels,

• logistics management software,

• CCTV networks

were used to blind or paralyse buildings hours before a missile strike.

Your requirements

• Offline backup of all security systems

• Access controllers that function during total network outage

• Segmented networks for building management

• Regular penetration testing

Source:

• Microsoft Threat Intelligence Report on Ukraine (2022–2024)

Rule 7: Tenant Continuity Plans Should Be Mandatory

In Ukraine, landlords who demanded formal tenant contingency plans (IT backup, evacuation, fuel stocks, work-from-shelter capabilities) had much lower turnover.

Asset-level business continuity planning must be part of your lease obligations.

Rule 8: Map Your Proximity to Critical Infrastructure

Assets located near railways, substations, command centres or military assets have higher collateral risk.

Example: In Ukraine, 22% of damaged commercial assets were within 2 km of strategic infrastructure (KSE Damage Assessment, 2024).

Baltic and Polish investors should pre-map:

• Distance to major power nodes

• Rail corridors

• Airports

• Government facilities

This is your risk-adjusted CAPEX model for wartime.

Rule 9: Standard Insurance Will Not Save You — It Will Exclude War

Across Eastern Europe, most insurers include explicit war exclusions. The Ukrainian example shows claims processes become unworkable during mass attacks.

Assume self-insurance for the first 12–18 months of conflict.

Conclusion

Ukraine provides the first modern case study of a European commercial real-estate market operating under sustained missile and drone attack. The lesson is clear:

If you don’t prepare now, you will prepare too late.

Generators disappeared from the market within days. Fire crews became overwhelmed overnight. Cyber attacks spiked before every major strike. Tenants fled buildings without shelters. Insurance policies became irrelevant.

Prepare now, not when the threat reaches your border.

Staunton Partners have prepared a detailed set of practical, non-theoretical lessons that European institutional owners should adopt now.

Get in contact with us if you want a copy of the full report.

About Staunton Partners

Staunton Partners are a real estate broker, market entry & risk management consultancy working in every major city in Ukraine. We help foreign and domestic investors protect their assets and operate safely in high-risk environments. Our team has been active in Ukraine since 2004 and has advised on billions of euros of assets, from logistics parks to high-rise offices.

Contact: 📩 info@stauntonpartners.com

More information: www.stauntonpartners.com