MYLA, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone struck a warehouse west of Kyiv that Ukrainian officials say was storing shells, mines and other ammunition, sparking massive explosions and fires that swept through dozens of nearby homes and buildings and killing 37 people.

The Friday night attack on the warehouse in Myla, a village in the Bucha district, was the war’s deadliest attack this year and came on the second of three days of nearly round-the-clock Russian strikes that have severely disrupted life in and around the Ukrainian capital.

Attacks on the capital and, to a lesser extent, the rest of Ukraine have been nearly constant since Thursday. Kyiv officials say Russia builds up missile stocks and launches major attacks every few days, hoping to exhaust Ukrainian defenses through the sheer weight of numbers.

The warehouse strike sparked fires that raced through homes and damaged at least 50 residential buildings, said Tymur Tkachenko, who heads the local regional military administration. He was later cited by local media as saying 34 of the people killed were residents of a care home for elderly and disabled people. More than 370 people were evacuated.

The blasts rocked Myla, causing people to frantically seek cover.

“At about 8 p.m., the drone hit a warehouse somewhere and then the detonation began,” Oleksandr Vodolaz, a village resident, told The Associated Press. “No one knew that weapons were stored there.”

Another local, Zhanna Kravchuk, said she had so many questions about what happened.

“Why are weapons like this ... in warehouses and not on the front lines where they would help?” she said.

As crews raced to get people to safety and extinguish blazes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as a “terrible situation” and said it appeared to be the result of “terrible negligence on the part of those who stored explosives right next to people.”

He noted that Ukrainian law forbids the storage of ammunition close to people’s homes and said criminal proceedings had been opened.

“Those who allowed this to happen must be held accountable for their decisions,” the president said.

Kyiv investigates warehouse targeted in attack

In a social media post Saturday, Zelenskyy shed more light on the situation.

“The first strike was on an ammunition storage site that definitely shouldn’t have been there – a Defense Forces storage facility. Shells, mines, other ammunition, and drones detonated.”

Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi didn’t specify what was in the warehouse, but he referenced a July attack on the Kyiv suburb of Vyshneve that struck an ammunition depot, killing 22 people and triggering detonations and fires that tore through nearby homes.

“Unfortunately, we can already see that the terrible 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.”

The 37 killed surpassed the 31 who died in a July 2 strike on Kyiv, which had been the war’s deadliest attack of 2026.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it hit a warehouse in Myla that was storing components and launch boosters for long-range drones. It also said it attacked the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail, and a logistics center and warehouse facilities storing parts for Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles in the Kyiv region.

Russian jet-powered drones pose a problem for Kyiv

Russian strikes damaged homes and apartment blocks in the southern Kherson region on Saturday, killing two people and wounding 27 more, including a child, Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the region administration, said in a statement.

Prokudin said earlier in the week that Russia had intensified its attacks on critical infrastructure in the region, which is about 70% under Russian control. He also urged tens of thousands of residents to move to safer regions because of the possibility of prolonged power and heating outages this winter.

Although officials haven’t said whether they were used in the warehouse attack, Russia has significantly increased its use of jet-powered drones, and their numbers will keep growing as Moscow sees their effectiveness, Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, told reporters Friday.

“Means of attack always outpace means of defense. We will certainly need to adapt. It will take time,” Palisa said. He said interceptor drones currently available to Ukraine, which could theoretically intercept jet-powered drones, have not yet demonstrated the expected effectiveness, though Ukraine is working on solutions.

Ukraine vows to increase long-range strikes

Meanwhile, Ukraine has stepped up its long-range attacks on Russian military industries and energy facilities in recent months. The attacks, which use domestically made drones, are meant to cut into a source of Moscow’s war funding and make Russians feel the consequences.

In his evening statement to the nation Friday, Zelenskyy said Kyiv hoped to increase its long-range strikes to reach 1000 drone launches every day.

“Right now, we average over 300 of our long-range sanctions,” Zelenskyy said, his preferred term for Kyiv’s long-range attacks that have also lately targeted Russian large-scale online retailers. “There must be more. We have a very specific goal, and we will achieve it.”

Moscow’s forces destroyed 313 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday.

Ukrainian drone attacks wounded 11 people in Russia’s Rostov region, Gov. Yuri Slyusar said. Writing on social media, he said that nine people were hospitalized, including four children.

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This story was updated to correct that 31 people, not 30, were killed in the July 2 attack on Kyiv.

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Davies reported from Manchester, England, and Yurchuk from Kyiv. Associated Press reporter Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke contributed to this report.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched a large aerial assault in and around Ukraine’s capital overnight into Tuesday morning, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than a dozen others, including three children, local authorities said.

The strikes marked the sixth straight day of heavy Russian attacks on Kyiv that began last week and are an unprecedented stretch of consecutive aerial assaults since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor more than 4½ years ago. Moscow’s aim is to grind down civilians by disrupting their daily life, Ukrainian officials say.

Several million Ukrainian schoolchildren returned to classes Tuesday for the new school year, just as Russia unleashed its onslaught of cruise and ballistic missiles, jet-powered drones, glide bombs and artillery salvos at Kyiv as well as eight other regions of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that 12 people were killed, including an Indian citizen.

The attack struck civilian infrastructure and residential buildings in several districts of Kyiv, authorities said, with eight people killed in the city itself and three others in the surrounding region.

Six employees of state-owned railway company Ukrzaliznytsia were among those killed in Kyiv when a ballistic missile hit a depot and other premises, company chairman Oleksandr Pertsovskyi said in a social media post.

Nearly 350 emergency workers were deployed in Kyiv and the surrounding region, Zelenskyy said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces carried out a “massive strike” on Ukraine overnight with “precision-guided weapons” and long-range drones. The assault targeted facilities manufacturing and storing weapons as well as military-related infrastructure, it said.

Ukraine’s air force said that Russia began the attack at 6 p.m. Monday, using ballistic, cruise and anti-radar missiles, as well as 218 drones and decoys. About a third of the drones were jet-powered, which are much harder to intercept than the propeller-driven version.

The main Russian targets were in the Kyiv and southern Odesa regions, the air force said in a statement.

The attack on the Odesa region, located on the Black Sea, damaged civilian infrastructure and wounded one person, regional head Oleh Kiper said.

Two residential buildings were damaged, while a fire broke out at a textile factory. Russian forces also struck the Orlivka international ferry crossing on the border with Romania, he said.

Russia also shelled the northern Zhytomyr region, starting fires at an industrial facility and a warehouse, Ukraine’s Emergency Service said.

In the capital, first responders worked to clear rubble from damaged apartment buildings and free trapped residents.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its air defenses overnight intercepted 516 Ukrainian drones over 18 Russian regions, as well as the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula and the Black Sea.

In the Leningrad region, the drone attack sparked a fire in the port of Ust-Luga, Gov. Alexander Drozdenko said, as Ukraine extended its campaign to hurt Russia’s oil sector, which is a mainstay of the economy.

Ust-Luga is one of Russia’s largest oil and gas export terminals more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) away from Ukraine. It has been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian drone attacks this year.

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Russia Torments Kyiv With New Tactic of Nonstop Waves of Drones

The nearly constant air raids, a shift from years of largely overnight attacks, have left residents exhausted and on edge.

As the war against Ukraine drags on, the Kremlin has found it necessary to adopt a more aggressive strategy to control both potential opponents and ordinary Russians. But governing through spy hunts and paranoia carries serious consequences.

Foreign Affairs examines how Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s paranoia is paralyzing Russia.

The article’s authors note that since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has steadily tightened its control over Russian society. For Russians, the new measures stand in sharp contrast to the limited freedoms they had before February 2022.

Less obvious, however, is a fundamental shift in Russia’s domestic security doctrine, Foreign Affairs writes. The Federal Security Service, or FSB, is now focused on hunting spies. Using tactics tested during the Soviet era, it has carried out a campaign to root out any threats to the regime. This has allowed the FSB to extend its reach deeper into society, private companies and government institutions.

But governing through spy hunts and paranoia carries significant costs, the authors argue.

Government agencies and private businesses, fearing FSB repression, conceal accurate data, avoid making decisions and increasingly operate in survival mode. Among ordinary Russians and civil servants, tighter social controls and treason prosecutions have created a pervasive atmosphere of distrust and deepened the sense of paralysis.

Ultimately, the Kremlin’s ability to govern the country could be undermined, the authors believe.

In seeking to turn any perceived political threat into a potential act of treason, Moscow relies not on legal standards but on secret FSB assessments. Against that backdrop, Russian officials, members of the elite and private organizations are increasingly reluctant to disclose information about facts or developments that could prove politically unpopular.

The situation is further complicated by Russian industry’s ties to the military, Foreign Affairs notes. Private companies involved in military projects are subject to counterintelligence scrutiny. Cost overruns or delays can bring the threat of treason charges.

Russian research institutions are also reluctant to share information. Even innocuous data, such as technical findings, research results or statistics, are now treated as potential security threats.

Strict oversight by the security services has also sharply restricted the publication of even routine statistics.

The Kremlin has achieved its immediate political goals, but at a high cost. Officials fail to report problems before they grow into crises. Regional authorities avoid taking initiative until they receive direct orders. Researchers, statistical agencies and businesses withhold information that could be useful to the authorities. Civil servants across government delay effective decisions while waiting for instructions “from above,” the publication writes.

For the Kremlin, the risk of elite paralysis is real and is spreading among senior officials and managers both in Moscow and the regions. By dismantling channels of feedback, Putin’s regime is becoming increasingly unable to understand the true state of affairs in the country, the authors conclude. Over the long term, that could leave Putin significantly more vulnerable to a serious political crisis.

On Aug. 7, Bloomberg reported that concern was growing among members of Russia’s elite that the FSB had spun out of control, as Russian dictator Vladimir Putin relies on the agency to preserve his rule.

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The Russian leader’s disconnect from reality was on stark display.