27 Dead in Kyiv Region After Russian Drone Hits Warehouse Storing Ammunition Near Homes

Since Russia's overnight drone assault on the Kyiv region on Friday, August 28, the death toll from a single strike near Bucha has climbed to at least 27, with officials warning it could still rise.

A Russian drone hit a facility in the village of Myla, about 5 kilometers west of Kyiv along the Kyiv-Chop highway, around 8:10 p.m. local time on August 28, according to Kyiv Oblast Governor Tymur Tkachenko. The strike sparked a massive fire that triggered secondary detonations of materials stored at the site, according to Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office.

By Saturday morning, August 29, Tkachenko reported 42 people injured, including four children, with seven hospitalized. He said the toll could still climb as search-and-rescue crews worked through the wreckage. More than 300 emergency workers responded, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Among the dead was Taras Didych, head of the Dmytrivka community that includes Myla. Tkachenko said Didych was one of the first responders on scene when he was killed.

The blast damaged roughly 50 residential buildings, according to Kyiv Post and the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration. A care facility housing elderly and disabled residents was also damaged. National Police closed sections of the M-06 Kyiv-Chop highway in both directions. A total of 381 people, including 59 children, were evacuated from the area, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

Prosecutors open negligence probe

Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office has opened a pre-trial investigation into possible criminal negligence over how explosive materials were stored at the warehouse. Investigators say they will examine whether the site had proper permits, whether storage rules were followed, and which officials signed off on the arrangement.

Ukrainian law bars military or industrial ammunition storage near residential areas. A Russian strike on Vyshneve in Kyiv Oblast on July 6 hit an ammunition facility belonging to a state-owned defense company, according to the Kyiv Independent, exposing the same pattern of explosives stored too close to civilians.

Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi did not mince words about the repeat failure. "On the fifth year of the full-scale invasion, making the same mistakes is criminal negligence," he wrote on Telegram, calling for "severe punishment" for those responsible "without exception."

Zelensky echoed that demand. "There are regulations: ammunition cannot be stored near houses or other residential buildings," he said, adding that Ukraine's National Police and Security Service are running a pretrial investigation. No one has been charged. This is an open investigation, not a finding of guilt, and Ukrainian officials have not named individuals as targets.

The broader air war

The Myla strike landed amid an intensifying exchange of long-range attacks. Ukraine's air force said Russia launched one Onyx anti-ship missile, one Iskander ballistic missile and 267 drones at Ukraine between Friday evening and Saturday morning, with air defenses downing or jamming 233 of them, according to Euronews.

Separately, a Russian drone strike killed one man in Kherson on Saturday and wounded another, while two people were hurt in an attack on Kyiv's Sviatoshynskyi district. Breitbart, citing the Associated Press, reported that Ukrainian drones killed five people in Russia's Belgorod region over the same period, while Russian missiles hit a Kharkiv apartment block, killing two.

Zelensky has pushed his forces to expand deep strikes inside Russia, setting a target of 1,000 drone launches a day. "Right now, we average over 300 of our long-range sanctions - there must be more," he said Friday evening.

Part of that campaign has hit Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, repeatedly since mid-July. Fox News reported that strikes on Wildberries facilities in Kotovsk, Elektrostal, Krasnodar, Nevinnomyssk and most recently a Bashkortostan petrochemical complex have killed at least seven people and wounded more than 60. Kateryna Bondar of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Fox News Digital the cumulative damage to Wildberries and its sellers is estimated at 600 billion to 800 billion rubles, or roughly $6 billion to $8.5 billion, citing Ukrainian outlet Pravda. Wildberries CEO Tatyana Kim has called the strikes a "terrorist attack" targeting a civilian company, an accusation Ukraine has not directly addressed in the sources reviewed here.

The investigation into the Myla warehouse is ongoing, and Ukrainian officials have promised findings on who authorized the storage of explosive materials so close to homes. Whether that inquiry produces actual prosecutions, as it did not fully after the July 6 Vyshneve strike, will determine whether Koretskyi's warning about repeating "the same mistakes" leads to any real change in how Ukraine stores its ammunition.