A Russian jet-powered drone strike on an ammunition depot in Myla, a village located 15 miles outside central Kyiv, has left a trail of destruction and sparked intense public anger. As of Sunday, the death toll from the Thursday night attack reached 38, with four individuals still reported missing. The incident, which occurred at 8 p.m., triggered a series of 30 to 50 explosions that persisted for approximately six hours, devastating the surrounding community.
Volodymyr, a 61-year-old security guard, described the aftermath while surveying his family’s severely damaged home. With the roof destroyed and windows shattered, the property sits just 300 metres from the impact site. His neighbor, 65-year-old Vira, expressed frustration over the placement of the military site. She and her son, Serhii, spent hours sheltering in a bunker during the blasts. Vira stated that those responsible for establishing the depot in a populated village are to blame, emphasizing that such materials should not be kept near homes.
Serhii, who had mistaken the depot for a humanitarian aid storage facility, noted that the family is now facing a difficult and expensive cleanup process with no electricity or water. Emergency responders discovered remnants of a Grad rocket launcher, along with several mines and cluster munitions, on the family’s property. While cleanup crews have removed some hazards, other dangerous items, including a box of bullets found in the ceiling, remain on-site.
The destruction extends into the nearby woods, where the warehouse site lies in ruins. The area remains dangerous, with emergency services periodically halting work due to ongoing drone threats. Volodymyr, who was working at a nearby lumber yard during the strike, continues to visit the site, describing it as a landscape of ashes and smoldering debris.
Thirty of the fatalities were residents of a care home situated near the warehouse. Ukraine’s intelligence service has launched a criminal inquiry into the incident. This event follows a similar tragedy in early July at Vyshneve, located nine miles south-east of the current site, where a munitions store hit resulted in nine deaths and damage to 280 homes. In that instance, two individuals were detained on suspicion of allowing weapons to be stored in an inappropriate location.
Local resident Liudmyla, whose daughter’s home was heavily damaged in the Myla attack, expressed deep frustration that such incidents are recurring. She noted that the proximity of these depots to vegetable gardens and residential doorsteps puts civilians at extreme risk. When asked who bears responsibility for the tragedy, Liudmyla pointed to both the Russian leadership and the officials who authorized the storage of munitions in the village.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the pattern of these incidents on Saturday, noting that similar storage issues have occurred repeatedly. As Moscow continues to aggressively target logistics and supply hubs, the civilian toll from these strikes has become a growing point of contention for those living in the shadow of military storage sites. The report also notes that volodymyr, 61, a security guard, leads visitors from his family’s badly damaged home, its roof blown off, back windows shattered, through the garden towards the impact site 300 metres away. The report also notes that the garden, like so many in Ukraine’s villages and suburbs, is a sizeable allotment. The report also notes that a vegetable patch is blackened and crisp underfoot, but today the greenhouse is shattered. The report also notes that even so, Volodymyr finds two surviving bunches to hand to. The report also notes that to 38, and four more people are still missing in an episode that has swiftly raised questions about why ammunition was stored so close to people’s homes, the death toll rose by one on Sunday. The report also notes that you can’t keep something like that here,” she says.
