Russian strike near Kyiv kills 37 as blast raises weapons storage questions

Kyiv,UPDATED: Aug 29, 2026 18:06 IST

At least 37 people were killed in a Russian strike near Kyiv on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, in one of the deadliest attacks on Ukraine this year. The strike sparked a fire in the Bucha district, west of the capital, which spread through homes and damaged at least 50 residential buildings, according to Tymur Tkachenko, head of the regional military administration.

The attack came as Kyiv faced a third straight day of near-constant Russian air raids that have disrupted daily life and economic activity in the capital more than four and a half years after Russia's full-scale invasion. Elsewhere, Russian strikes in the southern Kherson region killed two people and injured 27, while both sides reported fresh drone attacks.

In a statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a warehouse in the village of Myla had been hit, "followed by a detonation". He did not identify the site, but said Ukrainian law banned the storage of ammunition near civilian homes and that criminal proceedings had been opened. "Those who allowed this to happen must be held accountable for their decisions," Zelenskyy said. He also said a care home for elderly people and people with disabilities had been damaged and that an evacuation was under way.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi also gave no details about the warehouse, but referred to an attack on the Kyiv suburb of Vyshneve in early July that hit an ammunition depot, killed 22 people and caused large detonations and fires in nearby homes. "Unfortunately, we can already see that the 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 Ministry of Defence said it had struck a warehouse in Myla storing components and launch boosters for long-range drones. It also said it had attacked the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail, along with a logistics centre and warehouse facilities in the Kyiv region that were storing parts for Ukraine's Flamingo cruise missiles.

Zelenskyy later said two officials from state-owned companies, including Ukraine's largest arms producer, Ukroboronprom, had illegally allowed weapons to be stored at the site in Vyshneve and would be held accountable.

In Kherson, regional administration chief Oleksandr Prokudin said Russian strikes damaged houses and apartment blocks, and that one child was among the injured. Earlier this week, he said Russia had stepped up attacks on critical infrastructure in the region, around 70 per cent of which is under Russian control, and urged tens of thousands of residents to move to safer areas because of the risk of long power and heating outages this winter.

Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, said Russia had sharply increased its use of jet-powered drones and that their numbers would continue to grow because Moscow had seen their effectiveness. "Means of attack always outpace means of defence. We will certainly need to adapt. It will take time," Palisa said. He added that interceptor drones available to Ukraine, which could in theory bring down jet-powered drones, had not yet shown the expected effectiveness, though Ukraine was working on solutions.

At the same time, Ukraine has increased its long-range attacks on Russian military industries and energy facilities in recent months using domestically made drones, with the aim of cutting Moscow's revenues for the war and making Russians feel its effects. In his evening address on Friday, Zelenskyy said Kyiv hoped to raise its long-range strikes on Russia to 1,000 drone launches a day. "Right now, we average over 300 of our long-range strikes," Zelenskyy said, using his preferred term for these attacks, which have also recently targeted major Russian online retailers. "There must be more. We have a very specific goal, and we will achieve it."

Russia's Ministry of Defence said its forces destroyed 313 Ukrainian drones overnight. In Russia's Rostov region, Governor Yuri Slyusar said Ukrainian drone attacks injured 11 people, with nine taken to hospital, including four children. The latest strikes underscored the rising human cost of intensified attacks on both sides, with the deadly blast near Kyiv, the investigation into weapons storage near homes and the expanding drone war shaping the latest phase of the conflict.

With PTI Inputs

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