Myla toll hits 38 as Ukraine investigates why a depot sat among homes

A Russian drone struck an ammunition warehouse in the village of Myla, in the Bucha district west of Kyiv, at about 8 p.m. on Friday. The drone is not what killed most of the people who died. The shells, mines and other munitions inside detonated, and the blasts and fires ran through the village.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that 38 people are now confirmed dead. Twenty were injured, including two children. Four are still unaccounted for. It is the deadliest single attack of the war this year, past the 31 killed in a strike on Kyiv on 2 July.

Ukraine has opened a criminal case that runs in two directions at once: at Russia for the strike, and at whoever decided the munitions could sit there.

What we know

The warehouse was a Defence Forces storage site, and Zelensky said plainly on Saturday that it should not have existed where it did. "The first strike was on an ammunition storage site that definitely shouldn't have been there — a Defence Forces storage facility," he wrote. "Shells, mines, other ammunition, and drones detonated."

Residents describe a single hit followed by a long chain of explosions. "At about 8 p.m., the drone hit a warehouse somewhere and then the detonation began," Oleksandr Vodolaz, who lives in the village, told the Associated Press. "No one knew that weapons were stored there."

Tymur Tkachenko, who heads the Kyiv regional military administration, said early on that the fires damaged at least 50 residential buildings. Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi later put it higher, at around 130 houses plus other civilian buildings. By Saturday, 381 residents had been evacuated, 59 of them children.

A care home was among the buildings hit. Maryan Kushnir, a correspondent for RFE/RL, reported from Myla that a nursing home was struck and that many of its residents were killed; he described the whole area as being in ruins.

Taras Didych, who headed the neighbouring Dmytrivka community, was among the dead. He was at the scene as a first responder.

The site is still dangerous. Zelensky said on Sunday that contamination in the area is significant, and that State Emergency Service pyrotechnic teams are working around the clock to clear unexploded ordnance.

The Security Service of Ukraine registered the case under two articles of the criminal code — one covering the waging of a war of aggression, the other covering a negligent attitude toward military service. The National Police are running the pre-trial investigation with the SBU and the Prosecutor General's Office. Zelensky said Ukrainian law forbids storing ammunition close to homes. "Those who allowed this to happen must be held accountable for their decisions," he said.

Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi was blunter, and pointed at a precedent from seven weeks earlier — a Russian strike on 6 July on an ammunition depot at Vyshneve, a Kyiv suburb, which set off the same kind of chain detonation in a residential area. "Unfortunately, we can already see that the terrible tragedy in Vyshneve did not become a lesson," Koretskyi said. "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."

Russia's Defence Ministry said it had hit a warehouse in Myla holding components and launch boosters for long-range drones.

It landed in the middle of a heavy week. Zelensky said Russia launched close to 2,000 attack drones, more than 1,600 guided aerial bombs and 31 missiles at Ukraine over the past seven days, including North Korean-supplied ballistic missiles.

Then, on Sunday, Moscow raised the stakes again. Russia's Defence Ministry said on Telegram that its forces "have begun preparations for massive strikes against facilities in Ukraine's energy sector in response to the ongoing attacks by the Kyiv regime on civilian infrastructure and on Russia's oil and energy complex."

That framing points at Ukraine's own long-range campaign, which has been running hot. Ukrainian drones hit Russian oil refineries at least 21 times during August, the highest monthly count on record according to Bloomberg figures cited by the Kyiv Post, and a drone strike caused a fire at the Kirishi refinery in the Leningrad region over the weekend.

What is not confirmed

No official breakdown of the dead has been published, and how many of the 38 were care-home residents has not been stated by the regional administration or the police.

Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi has described the investigation as being into why the depot was located among residential buildings. Officials have not said whether the care home beside it is a separate line of inquiry.

The injured count has moved in a direction that has not been explained. Regional officials gave 42 injured on Saturday, when 27 deaths were confirmed. Zelensky gave 20 injured on Sunday, at 38 deaths. Neither account addresses the other.

As of Sunday, neither the SBU nor the National Police had publicly named a suspect, and neither had said which unit or which enterprise held the Myla site.

What was in the warehouse is contested — Ukraine says shells, mines, ammunition and drones, Russia says drone components and launch boosters — and no independent party has had access to the site.

Whether jet-powered drones were used at Myla is not something Ukrainian officials have addressed. Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, told reporters on Friday that Russia has sharply increased its use of them, and that Ukraine's interceptor drones have not yet performed as expected. "Means of attack always outpace means of defense," Palisa said. "We will certainly need to adapt. It will take time."

Russia has not said when its threatened strikes on the energy sector would begin, or how large they would be.

The reported death toll at Vyshneve in July varies between outlets, from single figures to more than twenty, so no number for it appears here.

What happens next

Vyshneve is the template worth watching, because Ukraine has already run this sequence once this summer. After the July depot detonation, Zelensky announced a criminal investigation on 11 July. Ukroboronprom, the state defence conglomerate, dismissed enterprise directors on 12 July after finding violations of ammunition storage regulations. Its director general, Herman Smetanin, resigned on 14 July. On 16 July the SBU detained a general director and a deputy director for production, both served notices of suspicion for official negligence causing grave consequences, and on 17 July a court ordered them held for 60 days without bail.

Whether Myla follows the same path — dismissals, then detentions, then charges — is the thing to watch this week. So is whether the investigation reaches past the individual site to the storage policy that put two depots next to housing in seven weeks.

The second thing to watch is the grid. Moscow's announcement was made in public and in advance, and last winter's campaign against Ukrainian power plants left millions without heat and light in sub-zero temperatures. Ukraine's energy officials head into September with that record behind them and a stated threat in front of them.

The recovery at Myla is not finished. Four people are still missing, the ground is contaminated with unexploded ordnance, and 381 evacuated residents have nowhere confirmed to return to.

Sources

Associated Press — “Russian strike on a Ukrainian warehouse kills 37 in the war’s deadliest attack this year”, 29 Aug 2026 — https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/russian-strike-on-a-ukrainian-warehouse-kills-37-in-the-wars-deadliest-attack-this-year/article_67822438-f043-5de1-bf61-10f27028fdd6.html,Kyiv Post — “Death Toll in Myla Ammunition Depot Blast Reaches 38”, 30 Aug 2026 — https://www.kyivpost.com/post/83376,Kyiv Post — “Moscow Threatens Retaliatory Strikes on Ukraine Energy Facilities”, 30 Aug 2026 — https://www.kyivpost.com/post/83374,AFP via Arab News — “Russia says preparing ‘massive strikes’ on Ukraine’s energy sector”, 30 Aug 2026 — https://www.arabnews.com/node/2656300/world,Euronews — “Russia threatens mass strikes on Ukraine energy sites as Kyiv depot death toll hits 38”, 30 Aug 2026 — https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/30/russia-threatens-mass-strikes-on-ukraine-energy-sites-as-kyiv-depot-death-toll-hits-38,RFE/RL — “Zelenskyy Blasts ‘Negligence’ As Ukraine Mourns Dozens Killed In Russian Strike”, 30 Aug 2026 — https://www.rferl.org/a/bucha-ukraine-ammunition-warehouse-russian-drone/33843180.html,Al Jazeera — “Kyiv launches criminal probe into arms depot attack that killed dozens”, 29 Aug 2026 — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/29/russian-attack-on-warehouse-near-ukraines-kyiv-kills-at-least-27,Kyiv Independent — “‘They must face the most severe punishment’ — How Vyshneve’s ammunition depot multiplied the toll of Russia’s strike”, 2 Aug 2026 — https://kyivindependent.com/these-requirements-were-ignored-how-ammunition-stored-beside-vyshneve-homes-multiplied-the-toll-of-a-russian-strike/,Ukrinform — “Four people missing after Russian strike on warehouses in Myla, Kyiv region — Vyhivskyi”, 29 Aug 2026 — https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-society/4158964-four-people-missing-after-russian-strike-on-warehouses-in-myla-kyiv-region-vyhivskyi.html