---
title: "Air raid as grounds for dismissal: when protecting life becomes a breach of discipline"
description: "Air raid in Ukraine: when the right to life becomes grounds for dismissal? Lawyer Daria Tarasenko explained in what cases an employer can legally dismiss an employee for abusing safety rules and what is considered absenteeism during the war. ⚖️🇺🇦"
date: 2026-07-09T14:50:00.000Z
lang: en
url: https://xab.info/en/posts/air-raid-ukraine-dismissal-employee-safety-rules-en
tags: []
publisher: "XAB.info"
---

# Air raid as grounds for dismissal: when protecting life becomes a breach of discipline

![Women waiting during an air raid alert: seated and standing by a closed door, glued to their phones — symbolizing the tension between safety and work obligations](https://xab.info/media/2026/07/10/vozdushnaya-trevoga-ukraina-uvolnenie-rabotnika-pravila-bezopasnosti/vozdushnaya-trevoga-ukraina-uvolnenie-rabotnika-pravila-bezopasnosti-1.webp)

For Ukrainian businesses, the fifth year of war has become a period where the "air raid" signal has turned into a routine. However, prolonged alerts lasting hours create a serious dilemma: how to balance meeting production plans with complying with safety regulations? The situation is complicated by the fact that some employers begin to interpret employees' prolonged stay in shelters as shirking work, while individual workers, conversely, try to use the emergency mode to skip work.

Daria Tarasenko, a lawyer from the "Actum" lawyers' association, explained the legal aspects of this collision in a comment to RBC-Ukraine. Ukrainian labor legislation unequivocally places human safety at the forefront. Article 153 of the Labor Code of Ukraine explicitly prohibits requiring personnel to perform tasks that pose a clear threat to life or health.

### Staying at the workplace is a violation of the law

From a legal point of view, the situation looks paradoxical for those used to strict discipline: if an employee stays at the machine or computer during the siren instead of going to the shelter, they are violating labor discipline themselves. Most responsible companies have already updated their internal rules, conducted briefings, and required employees to sign documents obliging them to go to shelters upon receiving a signal.

There is no room for speculation here, as the start, end, and exact duration of each threat are officially recorded by local authorities. This information is available in the public domain on state resources, making it impossible to tamper with facts.

### When "sitting in a shelter" becomes absenteeism

Sometimes workers try to use safety regulations as a loophole to simply not work. If a person is in a shelter without justification when there is no official alert, or consciously delays the return time — this is already a disciplinary offense. The lawyer emphasizes that the law protects life, but does not cover the abuse of rights.

By law, absenteeism is considered absence from work without valid reasons for more than three hours in total or continuously during the day. For such actions, an employer can quite legally dismiss a worker, but the procedure must be carried out correctly. To do this, a special commission is created at the enterprise, which studies the arguments of both sides in detail. It weighs the arguments of the manager and the explanations of the employee, after which it recommends applying a reprimand or dismissal.

### Systematic violations and Article 40 of the Labor Code

If an employee systematically ignores their duties and has at least one disciplinary sanction, they can be dismissed under Article 40 of the Labor Code (paragraph 3) for regular failure to comply with internal rules. In the matter of air raids, the law uncompromisingly protects human life. The time of the employee's absence from the workplace is considered fully justified if they fit clearly within the framework: "duration of the alert + time to travel to the shelter and back".

This travel limit is usually approved at the local level of the enterprise itself. However, for systematic emotional or conscious abuse of their rights, the manager has the full right to show the employee the door. Previously, the lawyer also explained issues regarding payment for overtime on weekends and compensation for the employment of internally displaced persons.