It is a day and a half since a Russian jet-powered drone smashed into an ammunition dump in Myla, a village 15 miles outside central Kyiv. Volodymyr, 61, a security guard, leads visitors from his family’s badly damaged home, its roof blown off, back windows shattered, through the garden towards the impact site 300 metres away.
The garden, like so many in Ukraine’s villages and suburbs, is a sizeable allotment. But today the greenhouse is shattered, a vegetable patch is blackened and crisp underfoot. Several metres of grapevine have been destroyed. Even so, Volodymyr finds two surviving bunches to hand to the Guardian.
It is a remarkable moment of generosity, though his family now has no electricity and no water after Thursday night’s extended bombing. The death toll rose by one on Sunday, to 38, and four more people are still missing in an episode that has swiftly raised questions about why ammunition was stored so close to people’s homes.
In the yard before the garden, Vira, 65, knows who is at fault. “Those who set up the depot here are to blame. There are people here, this is a village. You can’t keep something like that here,” she says. She and her son Serhii hid for hours in a small bunker by the side of the house waiting out what witnesses said were 30 or 50 explosions that went on for about six hours after the initial strike at 8pm.
Serhii says they had no idea ammunition was stored in their village. “I thought it was humanitarian aid that was stored there.” Now the family is presented with a cleanup that will be costly and difficult while starting with next to nothing. He is charging his phone from a car battery via a converter. It is all the power they have.
A missile shell from a Grad rocket launcher was found on their property once the explosions subsided, Serhii adds, as well as “several mines and cluster munitions”. They have been removed by the cleanup team, although a burnt-out box of bullets, freshly discovered in another part of the semi-collapsed ceiling, has not and sits by the front door awaiting a further collection.
Volodymyr’s tour continues out back. A grass line, effectively a track, has been marked out through the wood beyond the garden, between blackened patches where fires burned. There is smouldering, even flames in places, more bullets and boxes of bullets, then, on the right, unmistakably, a detonated anti-tank mine.
Finally, the woods open out, revealing a warehouse site, large parts of which are bombed out, an open area of destruction. A sulphurous smell endures, and periodically explosions can be heard, though they may be controlled detonations. Clear-up work by the emergency services is in the process of being halted at lunchtime because there is another drone threat above.
Volodymyr was on guard duty at a lumber yard close to the ammunition store on the night of the bombing. He survived the initial strike unscathed, and headed back home promptly, but feels a guard’s need to return. “I’ve been coming back and forth for two days to see these ashes,” he says.
Thirty of the dead were from a care home close to the ammunition store, the location of which is now subject of a criminal inquiry by Ukraine’s intelligence service. But it is not the first attack of its kind in recent weeks. There have been other Russian bombings of poorly placed ammunition dumps, as Moscow aggressively targets warehouse sites at a time when Ukraine is doing similar.
The fact this has happened recently in Ukraine is not lost on Liudmyla, whose adult daughter was in the house a couple of doors down when the Shahed drone hit. The home is also heavily damaged, windows facing the warehouse blown in, and Liudmyla recalls that a similar incident happened in early July, on the edge of Kyiv.
“Look at what’s going on here. Everything’s smashed to bits right here. Vyshneve [the scene of the previous incident, nine miles south-east] wasn’t enough for them, and there was more somewhere else too. No, they’ve dumped all this right by people’s vegetable gardens, right on their doorsteps,” she says, warning that munitions are still strewn around, not yet cleared up.
Nine people were killed after a munitions store was hit at Vyshneve, and 280 homes damaged. Two people have been detained on suspicion of allowing weapons to be stored in an inappropriate place after the episode, but as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Saturday, similar has happened again.
It is a dismal repetition at a time when Kyiv is already coming under increased attack from Moscow, the harm to civilians from attacks on food stores and logistics warehouses increasing. When Liudmyla is pressed to say who is at fault for the deaths and destruction at Myla, she offers a double answer.
“Putin! Who else? And those who set up the depot here.”
