Czech municipalities have had to offer integration services to over 300,000 Ukrainian refugees. The article argues that this enormous challenge means that municipalities need to develop broader stakeholder collaborations than are currently available. Drawing on recent empirical work, the article shows that Czech municipalities face major bottlenecks becaue they have had to deal with the crisis largely on their own. The key conclusion is that the need for co-ordinated and concerted action aimed at dealing with the Ukrainian crisis has been intensified by the high degree of political decentralization which is characteristic of the Czech Republic. This article adds to the literature by analysing the response of excessively decentralized systems to human-made disasters.