Drone strike on ammunition depot near Kyiv kills 34 nursing home residents

From Kyiv — Marco Zschieck

For the fourth consecutive day, Russia has sent drones against the Ukrainian capital, with devastating consequences. But that is not the only problem.

The Natalka Park is an oasis in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Located on the western bank of the Dnipro at the edge of the Obolon high-rise district, it offers plenty of space and greenery, basketball and football fields, a labyrinth of bushes, and the ruins of a mysterious tunnel from the Stalin era. On hot days, water is sprayed for cooling.

On Saturday, a two-year-old girl was killed in Natalka Park by the explosion of a Russian attack drone. It was one of several strikes in the district in the north of the Ukrainian capital. A residential building was also hit.

Since Thursday, it has literally been one blow after another. Saturday was the third consecutive day that Russia has covered Kyiv with seemingly endless drone terror. On Friday and Saturday, there were more than two dozen air raid alerts. By Sunday afternoon, six more had been added.

"It feels strange to go out on the street under these circumstances," says resident Olena. But she can't hide in the house forever. For four days, she has been hearing air defense firing and explosions, fortunately not near her. The new jet-powered drones are flying in repeatedly. They are more expensive but faster than their propeller-driven predecessors, which are also called mopeds because of their characteristic sound. This makes it harder for air defense to shoot them down. Additionally, civilians have less time to get to a safer place.

Fireballs and Flying Glowing Fragments

Air defense seems to be preventing the worst. The Ukrainian Air Force reported intercepting:

• 125 out of 130 attack drones on the night leading to Sunday
• 199 out of 224 on Saturday during the day
• 233 out of 267 on the night from Friday to Saturday

In one week, Russia is said to have fired around 2,000 such drones at Ukraine. Several ballistic missiles were also fired by Russia. How many were intercepted has not been disclosed by the Air Force in its daily bulletin for a few weeks. Ukraine primarily lacks missiles for the Patriot defense system, which would be capable of intercepting ballistic missiles.

The most deaths occurred on the night leading to Saturday in a suburb of Kyiv. In Maly, located on the expressway to Lviv, according to Ukrainian media reports, a Russian drone struck a commercial building. This caused a fire that triggered a chain of very severe secondary explosions.

Numerous videos of this circulated on social media, recorded from vehicles on the passing expressway. They show both a large fireball rising and glowing fragments flying around. The images suggest that an ammunition depot exploded, possibly also storing incendiary ammunition.

The secondary explosions are said to have destroyed or severely damaged around 80 residential buildings in the small town. Many of them had only been repaired after the town formed the front line at the beginning of Russia's invasion in 2022. A nursing home also caught fire from the explosions, where 34 residents died.

Zelenskyy Announces Investigation

In a video message, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke out. "The ammunition should not have been there." Twenty more people were injured and four others are still missing. He announced an investigation. The prosecutor's office launched an investigation.

Indeed, it is prohibited to store ammunition near residential areas. The tragedy recalls another incident in early July in the Kyiv suburb of Vyshneve. There too, after...