A Russian drone strike hit a warehouse near Kyiv late Friday, killing at least 37 people, injuring at least 42 and forcing more than 370 evacuations as fire and explosions tore through the area. The warehouse was in the village of Myla, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, and the first impact was followed by a detonation. The blast damaged at least 50 residential buildings, including a care home for elderly and disabled people. Ordinary people paid the price. Again.
A depot next to homes, then the paperwork
Zelenskyy said the site was a depot owned by the Ukrainian military and stored shells, drones and other munitions. In a video address, he said, “The first impact was on a place where ammunition was being stored that absolutely should not have been there – a depot of the defence forces. [There was] detonation of shells, mines, other munitions and drones on a significant scale.” He also said, “There are regulations in place; ammunition cannot be stored near homes or other residential areas.”
That line about regulations sits beside the wreckage. The warehouse strike damaged homes, shattered a care home and left at least 42 injured, among them four children, according to regional authorities. The state had rules. The explosives were still there. The neighbourhood still burned.
Zelenskyy said criminal proceedings had been opened on charges of official negligence. Ukrainian prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the legality of the “storage of explosive objects and materials.” They said they would check the legality of the placement and storage of explosive objects and materials on the territory of the enterprise, the availability of the necessary permits and approvals, and the actions of officials who made the relevant decisions. The language is bureaucratic, but the question is blunt: who put a military depot near people’s homes, and who signed off on it?
State negligence, state punishment
The regional governor, Tymur Tkachenko, said the attack caused a large-scale fire that spread to private residential buildings and was accompanied by explosions. He said the strike hit the Bucha district of the Kyiv region and that emergency and rescue teams were still working at the scene. He also said a 14-year-old was killed in a separate attack in the Boryspil district. Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said a two-year-old died after a Russian drone crashed in Obolonskyi, and that five people, including an 18-year-old girl, were injured in fresh strikes on the capital on Saturday morning.
One of those killed in the warehouse strike was Taras Didych, the head of the Dmytrivka community, who died while rescuing others. Zelenskyy said the warehouse had been used to house drones, shells, mines and other ammunition for the Ukrainian military and called it a “terrible situation and terrible negligence on the part of those who stored explosives right next to people.”
The Ukrainian prime minister, Serhii Koretskyi, said he regretted that mistakes had not been learned from a previous deadly strike on a munitions depot in Vyshneve, near Kyiv, in July. He said an investigation into that incident, in which 22 people were killed and fires tore through nearby homes, had revealed serious failings by a state-owned company that did not comply with regulations on the proximity of residential buildings. Koretskyi said, “Unfortunately, we can already see that the terrible tragedy in Vyshneve did not become a lesson,” and added, “In the fifth year of a full-scale invasion, making the same mistakes is criminal negligence. And all those guilty, without exception, must be severely punished so that such situations do not happen again.”
The state’s answer to its own failures is punishment after the fact. The dead don’t get a hearing.
Long-range war, civilian infrastructure
Russia’s ministry of defence said it had hit a warehouse in Myla storing components and launch boosters for long-range drones. It said it also attacked the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail, as well as a logistics centre and warehouse facilities storing parts for Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles in the Kyiv region. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched one Onyx anti-ship missile, one Iskander ballistic missile and 267 drones at Ukraine since 6 pm on Friday, and that local air defences shot down or neutralised 233 of the drones by Saturday morning.
Elsewhere, Russian attacks across Ukraine’s southern Kherson region killed two people and wounded 27 more on Saturday, including a child, a local official said. In the southern Odesa region, one person was killed and three others injured in another Russian attack in which eight trucks transporting food were set ablaze, officials said. Another two people were injured in an attack on Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district, local authorities said.
The BBC said the strike was the second to hit a munitions depot near Kyiv in recent months. It said the attack damaged nearby properties including a care home for the elderly and disabled, and quoted local resident Liubov Pavlenko, 45, as saying, “Everything is completely damaged,” and, “There are cracks all around the entire perimeter, and cracks around the windows. Basically, the structural integrity has been compromised.” The BBC also said Zelenskyy had referenced the strike on an ammunition warehouse in Vyshneve in July, which caused a secondary detonation that killed ten people.
The Guardian said the attack was one of the deadliest in Ukraine this year and that Kyiv and Moscow had recently intensified long-range strikes, increasingly hitting civilian infrastructure such as logistics warehouses and oil and port facilities. It said Zelenskyy had called on his forces to step up deep strikes on Russia and set a target of 1,000 drone launches a day, saying, “Right now, we average over 300 of our long-range sanctions - there must be more.” The paper also said Russian attacks in the Kyiv region damaged 14 warehouses, 16 private houses, three apartment buildings and 16 vehicles in a second straight day of aerial attacks.
Euronews said more than 370 people were evacuated and that the evacuation process was continuing. It said the warehouse was in the Bucha district and that the fire spread to private residential buildings. DW said the attack killed dozens and that the warehouse was in the village of Myla. Politico said the strike killed 27 people and that the warehouse was near homes in Ukraine. The reports also differed on the casualty count and exact location, with some naming Myla and others the Bucha district near Kyiv.
The attack came amid a broader escalation in Russian and Ukrainian long-range strikes. The Guardian said Russia and Ukraine had been ramping up such attacks in recent months, particularly targeting logistics and energy facilities. It also said Zelenskyy had ordered his military to increase long-range drone strikes against Russia to 1,000 per day, up from about 300 currently, and that he said, “There needs to be more: there is a concrete goal, and we will fulfil this task.” The concrete goal, meanwhile, keeps landing on homes, warehouses and the people trapped between states that treat civilian life as collateral.