SBU Deputy Head Major General Oleksandr Poklad has reported to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on who inside Ukroboronprom allowed weapons and ammunition to be stored in warehouses next to residential buildings in Vyshneve, Kyiv Oblast, Zelenskyy said in his evening address on 11 July.
According to the president, the directors of two state enterprises acted in defiance of both the law and a decision of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff.
"There was a direct ban on this — both under the law and under the Staff's decision — and all of it was violated. The specific officials are known, and the state's position is that each of them must be brought to fair justice. We all understand what wartime means, and every director must feel that people's lives depend on his decisions or his inaction," Zelenskyy said.
Investigators are also examining the conduct of the deputy directors responsible for security, as well as the actions of other officials. The SBU is working jointly with other law enforcement agencies and the Prosecutor General's Office within a criminal case.
"There are proper places in Ukraine to store weapons and ammunition — all of it is defined, so that there are no residential buildings nearby," Zelenskyy added.
The president also called for faster reconstruction of housing destroyed by Russian strikes, not only in Vyshneve. He said there is "something to fix at the government level," and that decisions will follow shortly.
"Today we also spoke in detail about the future of Ukroboronprom. It is a large structure, it includes dozens of enterprises, one of which sited that depot in Vyshneve. Of course, the internal processes within Ukroboronprom for controlling the enterprises and their directors must be stronger," Zelenskyy said.
Background: what happened in Vyshneve
Russia struck Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast with a massive combined barrage overnight on 6 July. Ukraine's Air Force tracked 68 missiles and 351 attack drones, including 23 Iskander-M and S-400 ballistic missiles and six Zircon/Oniks missiles. Air defenses downed or suppressed 363 of 419 targets — but not a single ballistic or Zircon missile was intercepted, and 29 ballistic missiles and 18 drones struck 34 locations.
The failure to stop a single ballistic missile is a direct consequence of Ukraine's exhausted Patriot interceptor stocks, drained further by the global shortage that followed the war on Iran. At the NATO summit in Ankara on 8 July, Donald Trump promised Ukraine a license to build Patriots itself — an offer that cannot stop a missile before 2027, and that Lockheed Martin and RTX had not been told about. Two expert groups advising the UK Defence Ministry were asked whether Ukraine could realistically produce Patriots within a year; both concluded it could not.
In Kyiv itself, the death toll from the overnight barrage climbed to 19 as rescuers kept working through the rubble of damaged high-rises, and eleven of those people died in a basement that the city's own map listed as an official shelter.
In Vyshneve, a town on Kyiv's southwestern edge, the strike triggered a secondary detonation that burned for hours. More than 600 residents were evacuated because of the risk of further explosions. In all, 13 hectares of residential development in the town were damaged. Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko called it the largest destruction of the residential sector in the entire full-scale Russian invasion, and the government is allocating money from the reserve fund to rebuild damaged housing in the community.
General Staff spokesman Dmytro Lykhovii said the facility where the detonation occurred is not subordinate to the Armed Forces and does not fall under their management, noting that the Commander-in-Chief's order banning the siting of ammunition depots near civilian buildings remains in force.
On 9 July, Zelenskyy confirmed that the object hit in Vyshneve was an ammunition depot belonging to one of Ukroboronprom's enterprises, called the situation "absolutely appalling," and promised criminal liability and dismissals. Ukroboronprom, also known as Ukrainian Defense Industry, groups roughly 100 enterprises producing missiles, drones, armored vehicles, and ammunition.
