At least 37 dead and hundreds evacuated after strike on Kyiv warehouse

Thirty-seven people have been killed and almost 400 evacuated after a Russian drone strike triggered explosions at a warehouse in the Kyiv region late on Friday.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the blast damaged residential buildings and a care home in the surrounding area as prosecutors opened an investigation into the “legality of the placement and storage of explosive objects” on site.

Zelensky wrote on X: “Ammunition must not be stored near houses or other residential buildings. Appropriate conclusions will certainly be drawn.”

Four children are among 42 people injured, according to regional head Tymur Tkachenko, with a rescue operation ongoing at the site in the Bucha district on Saturday.

He said more than 300 emergency service personnel had been deployed to the village of Myla, where “a care home for elderly people and people with disabilities” was among the properties damaged.

“Criminal proceedings have been opened on charges of official negligence,” he said.

The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general said it was reviewing the “legality of the placement and storage of explosive objects and materials” near residential buildings.

It said the “actions of officials who made the relevant decisions” would also be investigated.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said in a statement that its forces had targeted “an ammunition depot” in Myla which stored “components and launch boosters for FP-1/FP-2 long-range unmanned aerial vehicles”.

Meanwhile, Tkachenko said a 14-year-old was killed in a separate attack in the Boryspil district while Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said a two-year-old had died after a Russian drone crashed in Obolonskyi.

He added that five people, including an 18-year-old girl, were injured in fresh strikes on the capital on Saturday morning. Five people have been killed across the country over the past day, according to local officials.

Zelensky reported further overnight strikes in Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy and Zaporizhzhia, as the Ukrainian army said it had shot down 233 Russian drones.

In Russia, local officials said two people had been killed and 25 injured in strikes in the Belgorod and Rostov regions in the past 24 hours.

The Moscow-appointed governor of the occupied Ukrainian region of Zaphorizhzhia said four people were injured after a Ukrainian strike hit a shopping centre.

Russian online retailer Ozon said one of its logistic centres had been hit in an overnight Ukrainian drone strike. It said it had also suspended operations at a second logistics centre and evacuate staff “due to the danger in the area”.

The retailer’s facilities in Krasnodar, Dagestan, Stavropol and Adygea were targeted in strikes earlier this week, resulting in several injuries and widespread damage.

Russia and Ukraine have been intensifying their attacks in recent months, with Kyiv focusing its operations on Russian economic targets.

Ukraine has for weeks struck sites belonging to Wildberries, the country’s biggest online retailer, describing the firm as a legitimate target because it supplied components to the military, which Moscow denies.