Russian strike on a Myla warehouse kills 37 and opens a negligence case in Kyiv

A Russian drone strike on a warehouse in Myla, in Kyiv region's Bucha district, killed at least 37 people on Friday night after the building detonated. Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, raised the death toll through Saturday. Forty-two people were injured, including four children. More than 380 residents were evacuated, 59 of them children.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the first impact hit "a place where ammunition was being stored that absolutely should not have been there, a depot of the defence forces." Shells, mines, other munitions and drones then exploded "on a significant scale." Residential buildings and a care home for elderly and disabled people were damaged. About 50 houses took some form of hit.

Prosecutors opened a case on the legality of storing explosive objects on the site and on the officials who approved it. Zelensky wrote: "Ammunition must not be stored near houses or other residential buildings. Appropriate conclusions will certainly be drawn. Those who allowed this to happen must be held accountable for their decisions."

Who died, and who was first on the ground

Among the dead was Taras Didych (also reported as Tymur Didych), head of the Dmytrivka community. Tkachenko said he was one of the first to reach the scene to help. More than 300 emergency personnel worked the site on Saturday. A stretch of the M-06 Kyiv-Chop highway, between kilometres 15 and 32, was closed because of the fire.

Seven of the 42 injured were hospitalised at the last regional count. Temporary housing was offered to families whose homes were damaged. The rescue and firefighting operation was still running on Saturday afternoon. Tkachenko warned that the death toll might move again.

What Russia said it hit

The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces targeted an ammunition depot in Myla that stored "components and launch boosters for FP-1/FP-2 long-range unmanned aerial vehicles." The same statement listed strikes on the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail and on a logistics site said to hold parts for Ukraine's Flamingo cruise missiles.

Those claims and Zelensky's admission sit closer together than wartime statements usually do. Kyiv does not deny that a defence-forces depot was in the village. It denies that the depot should have been there. Moscow claims a military target. The civilian dead are the fact that neither statement erases.

Bucha district, again

Myla is a short drive west of Kyiv, inside the district whose name became global in 2022. The care home, the 50 houses and the highway closure are the local geography of this strike. The legal geography is different. Ukrainian regulations already forbid storing ammunition beside homes. The president has now put that rule in a public sentence and pointed it at unnamed officials.

A warehouse fire that becomes a detonation is a known risk in this war. What is specific here is the combination of a confirmed depot, a confirmed care home, a confirmed community head among the dead, and a criminal file opened by the same government that owned the site. That file will have to name who signed the storage order and when.

The open questions

Tkachenko did not, in his first tallies, itemise how many of the 37 died from the drone itself and how many from the secondary explosions. Zelensky's video address treated the detonation as the main killer. The distinction matters for the negligence case. It also matters for any later argument about proportionality under the law of armed conflict.

Saturday's verified numbers are 37 dead, 42 injured, four of them children, 381 evacuated, 50 buildings damaged, one community head killed, one highway segment closed, one presidential instruction to prosecute the storage decision. The warehouse in Myla is no longer standing as a warehouse. The case file is the structure that replaces it.