37 Dead near Kyiv: a Russian Drone Hit an Ammunition Depot That Ukrainian Law Forbids From Being There

Thirty-seven dead. Forty-two wounded, four of them children. Some fifty damaged buildings and a care home for the elderly and people with disabilities. 381 people evacuated. This is the toll for one village near Kyiv after a Russian drone strike - and after the secondary detonations that followed for hours.

The village is called Myla, in the Bucha district, about fifteen minutes west of Kyiv. The Russian drone hit a military ammunition depot. The problem is that the depot stood a few metres from family homes and from the care home.

When your own government admits the failure

Responsibility for the attack is Russian and nobody in Kyiv disputes that. But what has stirred the Ukrainian public is the second question: who allowed tonnes of explosives to sit in the middle of a populated area?

The answer came from the very top. In an emergency address, President Volodymyr Zelensky turned towards his own defence structures. "This is a horrific situation and horrific negligence on the part of those who stored explosives right next to people. The first strike hit an Armed Forces depot that definitely should not have been there. Shells, mines, other ammunition and drones detonated. The scale is enormous," he said, confirming that the police and the SBU security service had opened an investigation into gross official negligence.

Prime Minister Serhiy Koretskyi was sharper still. "Unfortunately, it can already be stated that the terrible tragedy in Vyshneve was not a lesson. To be making the same mistakes in the fifth year of the full-scale invasion is criminal negligence. Everyone at fault, without exception, must face severe punishment," he wrote on Telegram.

The same story, two months ago

Vyshneve is not mentioned by accident. At the start of July, in another town close by in the Kyiv region, a Russian missile hit an ammunition depot owned by a company within the state defence concern Ukroboronprom. Eight people died in that series of explosions and 29 were injured.

After that tragedy the authorities promised urgent audits and severe punishment. The concern announced it had dismissed two senior managers and several officials who had unlawfully approved the location. Zelensky personally said those responsible would face criminal charges. That was less than two months ago.

Ukrainian law explicitly forbids storing military ammunition and industrial explosives in cities and near residential zones. So there was no legal gap. There was no ambiguity. There was somebody in the military chain of command who decided that a village beside the Kyiv-Chop motorway was a good place for high-risk munitions.

Dismissal as a substitute for reform

Among the dead is Taras Didych, head of the local Dmytrivka community, who was among the first to rush in to save neighbours before the secondary detonations levelled the surrounding buildings. That is what is left when the system gives way - people running towards the explosion because the institution did not stand in front of it.

Dismissing two managers in July did not stop the practice. That is the lesson worth more than any speech: a personnel measure is not a reform, and a press release is not oversight. When a state promises an audit and eight weeks later repeats the same scenario with four times the casualties, the problem is not the people they removed but the system that does not check them.

A day of mourning was declared in Ukraine for Sunday, and rescuers are still searching the rubble. The public is demanding arrests, not statements. The question is whether the fifth year of the war will bring anything more than a third promise of severe punishment.