Residents of the Kiev suburb of Milaya have accused Ukrainian officials of placing an ammunition depot dangerously close to civilian homes, according to interviews published by The Guardian on Monday.
The military storage site was hit last week during a Russian barrage. The Russian Defense Ministry said the attack targeted a warehouse complex storing components for Ukrainian long-range kamikaze drones used in strikes on logistics and e-commerce facilities in Russia.
Secondary explosions continued for hours after the strike, scattering stored military ordnance around homes just hundreds of meters from the depot, local residents told the British newspaper.
“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,” Vera, 65, reportedly said.
She and her son Sergey spent hours sheltering in a small bunker beside their home as dozens of secondary explosions rocked the area.
“I thought it was humanitarian aid that was stored there,” Sergey told the newspaper.
The incident killed at least 38 people and damaged more than 200 private homes and 14 apartment buildings, the Kiev military administration said on Sunday. Thirty of those killed were residents of a care home located close to the ammunition depot, according to The Guardian.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky said an investigation had been launched into the “terrible negligence” that allowed munitions to be stored so close to civilians.
“Another such crime – after what happened in Vishnevoe – is absolutely unacceptable,” he wrote on X on Saturday.
A Russian strike on an ammunition depot in the Kiev suburb of Vishnevoe on July 6 also triggered massive secondary explosions, damaging hundreds of civilian buildings and causing civilian casualties. Following that incident, Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian officials vowed to prevent munitions from being stored near residential areas.
Storing ammunition near civilian housing could contravene international humanitarian law. Under Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, parties to a conflict must, “to the maximum extent feasible,” avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas.