Russian Drone Strike Near Kyiv Kills At Least 37 In Depot Blast

KYIV, Ukraine —

At least 37 people were killed and 42 others were injured, including four children, when a Russian drone struck a Ukrainian military depot storing munitions in the town of Myla, in the Bucha district on Kyiv's western edge, according to The Guardian. The strike set off a massive fire and a chain of explosions, damaged more than 50 residential buildings, including a care home for elderly and disabled residents, and forced the evacuation of more than 370 people, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, according to the Guardian's report.

Zelenskyy said the depot held shells, drones and other munitions belonging to Ukraine's defense forces. "The first impact was on a place where ammunition was being stored that absolutely should not have been there," he said in a video address carried by The Guardian, describing detonations of "shells, mines, other munitions and drones on a significant scale." He said regulations bar storing ammunition near homes or residential areas, and that criminal proceedings had been opened on charges of official negligence.

A Second Depot, A Second Investigation

Ukrainian prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into whether the storage of the explosive materials was legal, The Guardian reported. Among those killed was Taras Didych, the head of the local Dmytrivka community, who died while helping rescue others, according to Zelenskyy.

Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said the tragedy echoed a strike in July on a depot in Vyshneve, also near Kyiv, that killed 22 people and revealed that a state-owned company had failed to follow rules on keeping munitions away from residential buildings. "Unfortunately, we can already see that the terrible tragedy in Vyshneve did not become a lesson," Koretskyi said, according to The Guardian. "In the fifth year of a full-scale invasion, making the same mistakes is criminal negligence."

Russia's defense ministry said it had targeted a warehouse in Myla storing components and launch boosters for long-range drones, and said it had also struck the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail along with facilities storing parts for Ukraine's Flamingo cruise missiles in the Kyiv region, The Guardian reported. Ukrainian officials did not confirm those claims.

The strike came during a broader wave of Russian drone attacks on the Kyiv region this week that damaged 14 warehouses, 16 private houses, three apartment buildings and 16 vehicles, according to Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, in comments reported by The Associated Press via The Mainichi. Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian attacks on the southern Kherson region killed two people and wounded 27 others, including a child, a local official said, according to The Guardian.