August 29, 2026
Edited by Yiannis Damellos
“If Zelenskyy didn’t know the depot was there, but the Russians did, who knew—and who is actually running Ukraine's War?”
A Russian drone strike on a Ukrainian ammunition depot near Kyiv killed at least 37 people and devastated nearby civilian areas. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the storage of explosives near homes “terrible negligence” and promised an investigation. But his condemnation raises an uncomfortable question: Who authorized the depot, who knew it was there, and how could the president of a country at war not know?
KYIV — At least 37 people were killed Friday evening when a Russian drone struck a Ukrainian ammunition storage facility near the village of Myla, west of Kyiv, triggering enormous secondary explosions that tore through nearby homes and buildings and forced the evacuation of nearly 400 people.
The Russian attack was devastating. But the catastrophe has also exposed a deeply uncomfortable question for the Ukrainian government: Why was a military ammunition depot containing shells, mines, other explosives and drones operating so close to a civilian population in the first place?
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself supplied the question when he condemned the storage arrangement as an act of “terrible negligence” and said those responsible must be held accountable.
Now, that is a serious accusation. But it also raises a problem for Zelenskyy.
The depot was not a Russian facility. It was a Ukrainian Defense Forces storage site. Ukrainian authorities have opened criminal proceedings to determine whether the ammunition was being stored legally, whether the facility had the required permits and approvals, and who was responsible for placing explosive materials so close to residential areas.
So who knew? And who was supposed to know?
Zelenskyy said the ammunition “should not have been there.” If that is established, the obvious next question is not merely who physically placed it there. It is how such a facility could exist within a wartime military system without the responsible chain of command knowing about it.
A president does not personally inspect every warehouse in a country fighting a major war. But neither does a military ammunition depot appear by accident. Someone selected the location. Someone authorized the storage. Someone was responsible for security. Someone knew what was inside. Someone determined that the arrangement was sufficiently safe—or failed to determine it.
Now, questions are raised, quite uncomfortable indeed.
- If the president genuinely did not know, that is itself a question of command and oversight.
- If senior military or defense officials knew, why was the arrangement permitted?
- And if no senior official knew, what does that say about Ukraine's control over its own ammunition infrastructure during the fifth year of a full-scale war?
Those questions become considerably harder to dismiss because this was apparently not an isolated failure.
Ukrainian officials themselves have pointed to a similar disaster at Vyshneve near Kyiv in July. That explosion also involved an ammunition warehouse and killed civilians. Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said Friday's catastrophe demonstrated that the earlier tragedy “did not serve as a lesson.”
That makes Zelenskyy's language about negligence particularly significant.
The president cannot reasonably have it both ways: claiming supreme authority over a wartime state when decisions succeed, while treating basic failures of military administration as mysterious acts committed by unnamed subordinates when they end in disaster.
Surely, that does not make Zelenskyy responsible for the Russian strike. But we must know why the attack was capable of producing such catastrophic secondary explosions in a civilian neighborhood. The answer to this may lie inside Ukraine's own military and administrative system. According to Ukrainian authorities, the warehouse contained ammunition and drones belonging to the country's defense forces. The prosecutor's investigation is examining whether explosive materials were stored legally and whether the responsible organization possessed the necessary authorizations.
The Carnage
The human consequences were enormous. At least 37 people were killed, dozens more were injured, residential buildings were damaged, and a care facility for elderly and disabled people was affected. Emergency crews struggled to operate because explosions continued after the initial strike.
The attack was also part of an extraordinary Russian aerial campaign against Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said hundreds of drones had been launched against Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities over several days, with the capital subjected to almost continuous air-raid alerts. The attacks disrupted transportation, damaged commercial facilities and killed civilians elsewhere, including a 2-year-old girl in Kyiv.
Convenient Timing Indeed
The timing of the strike is particularly troubling for Kyiv because Ukraine is running dangerously short of the very weapons needed to stop Russia's increasingly sophisticated missile campaign. Patriot interceptor stocks in Europe have fallen to critically low levels, while Ukraine is pleading for additional interceptors capable of engaging Russian ballistic missiles. Zelenskyy has said Kyiv needs hundreds more Patriot missiles, even as U.S. and NATO stocks are themselves under severe pressure. The problem is not simply that Ukraine needs more weapons; it is that the West is struggling to produce these expensive interceptors fast enough to replace what the war is consuming.
That vulnerability gives Russia an increasingly powerful advantage. Moscow does not necessarily need to destroy every Ukrainian target if it can force Kyiv to choose which targets are worth defending. A limited supply of sophisticated interceptors means that every Russian ballistic missile presents a calculation: protect a power station, a government building, a military headquarters — or an ammunition depot sitting beside civilians. Against that backdrop, the destruction of the Myla facility and the enormous secondary explosions make the question of Ukrainian military planning even more difficult to ignore. Ukraine is asking its allies for scarce missiles to protect its cities while, according to its own president, ammunition was being stored in a location where a single successful Russian strike could produce catastrophic consequences.
And then there is Washington's extraordinary diplomatic signal. CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a rare and largely unannounced trip to Moscow this week, meeting Russian intelligence officials and urging the Kremlin toward genuine negotiations to end the war. The Kremlin confirmed the talks but said Ratcliffe did not meet Putin personally; the Russian president was briefed on the discussions. The mission was also intended to warn Moscow against testing NATO, according to U.S. reporting.
The juxtaposition is striking
While Ukrainian cities are being subjected to almost continuous Russian attacks and Kyiv's supply of ballistic-missile interceptors is approaching a dangerous limit, America's top intelligence chief is traveling to Moscow to tell Russia that the war needs an exit. Whatever the diplomatic outcome, the message from Washington appears increasingly clear: Ukraine cannot assume that an endless war fought under conditions of diminishing Western missile stocks is a sustainable strategy.
But precisely because Ukraine is fighting an enemy capable of striking its military infrastructure, the standards for ammunition storage should be exceptionally high. The more sophisticated the Russian drone campaign becomes, the less defensible it is to keep large quantities of explosives beside homes, care facilities and civilian businesses.
That is why Zelenskyy's promise to “find those responsible” should not be treated merely as presidential rhetoric. It should become a test of Ukraine's own system of accountability. Because now the President himself has to answer the following questions: Who approved the site? Who inspected it? Who knew what was stored there? Who assessed the blast radius? Who determined that nearby civilians could be adequately protected? Who received warnings? Who had the authority to move the ammunition? And, ultimately, who was responsible for making sure that a military depot did not become a bomb planted among civilians?
Those are not questions Moscow gets to answer. They are questions Kyiv must answer itself.
The tragedy in Myla therefore has two dimensions. Russia bears responsibility for launching the attack, but it is conducting a war against Ukrainian infrastructure. Ukraine, knowing that, bears a responsibility of its own: to establish whether its military and political authorities created the conditions under which one Russian drone could turn an ammunition depot into a mass-casualty event.
Zelenskyy has promised accountability. The Ukrainian public should insist that accountability travel all the way up the chain of command. Because if the president truly did not know that a major ammunition depot was operating next to civilian neighborhoods, that is not the end of the question. It may be the beginning.
That vulnerability gives Russia an increasingly powerful advantage. Moscow does not necessarily need to destroy every Ukrainian target if it can force Kyiv to choose which targets are worth defending. A limited supply of sophisticated interceptors means that every Russian ballistic missile presents a calculation: protect a power station, a government building, a military headquarters — or an ammunition depot sitting beside civilians. Against that backdrop, the destruction of the Myla facility and the enormous secondary explosions make the question of Ukrainian military planning even more difficult to ignore. Ukraine is asking its allies for scarce missiles to protect its cities while, according to its own president, ammunition was being stored in a location where a single successful Russian strike could produce catastrophic consequences.
And then there is Washington's extraordinary diplomatic signal. CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a rare and largely unannounced trip to Moscow this week, meeting Russian intelligence officials and urging the Kremlin toward genuine negotiations to end the war. The Kremlin confirmed the talks but said Ratcliffe did not meet Putin personally; the Russian president was briefed on the discussions. The mission was also intended to warn Moscow against testing NATO, according to U.S. reporting.
The juxtaposition is striking
While Ukrainian cities are being subjected to almost continuous Russian attacks and Kyiv's supply of ballistic-missile interceptors is approaching a dangerous limit, America's top intelligence chief is traveling to Moscow to tell Russia that the war needs an exit. Whatever the diplomatic outcome, the message from Washington appears increasingly clear: Ukraine cannot assume that an endless war fought under conditions of diminishing Western missile stocks is a sustainable strategy.
But precisely because Ukraine is fighting an enemy capable of striking its military infrastructure, the standards for ammunition storage should be exceptionally high. The more sophisticated the Russian drone campaign becomes, the less defensible it is to keep large quantities of explosives beside homes, care facilities and civilian businesses.
That is why Zelenskyy's promise to “find those responsible” should not be treated merely as presidential rhetoric. It should become a test of Ukraine's own system of accountability. Because now the President himself has to answer the following questions: Who approved the site? Who inspected it? Who knew what was stored there? Who assessed the blast radius? Who determined that nearby civilians could be adequately protected? Who received warnings? Who had the authority to move the ammunition? And, ultimately, who was responsible for making sure that a military depot did not become a bomb planted among civilians?
Those are not questions Moscow gets to answer. They are questions Kyiv must answer itself.
The tragedy in Myla therefore has two dimensions. Russia bears responsibility for launching the attack, but it is conducting a war against Ukrainian infrastructure. Ukraine, knowing that, bears a responsibility of its own: to establish whether its military and political authorities created the conditions under which one Russian drone could turn an ammunition depot into a mass-casualty event.
Zelenskyy has promised accountability. The Ukrainian public should insist that accountability travel all the way up the chain of command. Because if the president truly did not know that a major ammunition depot was operating next to civilian neighborhoods, that is not the end of the question. It may be the beginning.
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