At least 37 people died when a Russian drone strike hit an ammunition warehouse in the village of Myla, west of Kiev, on Friday night, August 29, 2026. The resulting explosions and fires spread to nearby homes and a residential facility for elderly and disabled individuals, marking the deadliest single attack of the war this year as Russia increases the frequency of large strikes to exhaust Ukraine’s defenses.
The strike on the village of Myla, located in the Bucha district, detonated projectiles, mines, and other munitions. Ukrainian authorities stated that the warehouse appeared to store munitions illegally. The explosion triggered fires that damaged at least 50 residential buildings and forced the evacuation of more than 370 people, according to Tymur Tkachenko, head of the local regional military administration. Tkachenko stated that 34 of the deceased were residents of a residence for seniors and people with disabilities.
Official Investigations and Criminal Proceedings in Kiev
Ukrainian authorities launched criminal proceedings following the disaster, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy describing the event as a terrible situation and the result of terrible negligence by those who stored explosives right next to the civilian population. Zelenskyy noted that Ukrainian law prohibits storing ammunition near homes and stated that those who allowed it to happen must be held accountable for their decisions.
The first attack was against a site of storage of munitions that definitely not should have been there: a storage facility of the Defense Forces. Detonated projectiles, minas, other munitions and drones.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine
Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi drew direct parallels to a previous incident on July 6 in the Kiev suburb of Vyshneve, where an ammunition storage explosion killed 22 people, triggered massive detonations, and forced the evacuation of about 600 residents due to unexploded ordnance. Koretskyi condemned the recurrence of such storage failures, calling it criminal negligence in the fifth year of a full-scale invasion that must be severely punished so such situations do not happen again.
Local Accounts and Eyewitness Perspectives
Residents in Myla described sudden terror as the initial drone impact gave way to an unbroken chain of detonations. Oleksandr Vodolaz recalled that around 8:00 at night, the drone impacted a warehouse and the detonation began, adding that nobody knew weapons were stored there.
Another local resident, Zhanna Kravchuk, questioned why weapons like those were kept in warehouses instead of the front lines where they would help, as emergency crews and firefighters worked to put people to safety and extinguish the flames.
Broader Air Campaign and Regional Impact
The strike on Myla formed part of a relentless three-day wave of attacks nearly uninterrupted since Thursday, altering life in and around the capital. Russian forces have intensified large-scale missile and drone operations in an effort to exhaust Ukrainian defenses through the sheer weight of numbers. The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that it had hit a warehouse in Myla storing components and launch accelerators for long-range drones, attacked the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail, and struck a logistics center and warehouses storing parts for Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles in the Kiev region.
The 37 fatalities surpassed the 31 deaths recorded from a prolonged drone and missile attack on Kiev on July 2, which Moscow explained was a reprisal for Ukrainian strikes against Russian oil facilities. In that earlier July attack, numerous people took shelter in subway stations while emergency teams cleared debris from collapsed apartment buildings. An even earlier attack on May 14 killed 24 people when a cruise missile leveled a nine-story apartment block in what the Ukrainian Air Force termed Russia’s largest barrage since the 2022 invasion. Meanwhile, separate strikes in the southern region of Kherson on Saturday damaged homes and apartment blocks, killing two people and injuring 27 others, including a child, according to regional administration head Oleksandr Prokudin. Prokudin noted that Russia has intensified attacks against critical infrastructure in the region, where the Kremlin controls 70% of the territory.
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