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Ukrainian prosecutors have opened an investigation into why a defence exhibition was held and promoted publicly despite the risk of a Russian strike, after a ballistic missile attack on the event killed at least 10 people and injured dozens more.
Ruslan Kravchenko, Ukraine’s prosecutor-general, said at least 10 people were killed in the rare daytime Russian missile bombardment near Kyiv on Friday.
The strikes targeted a military training ground where a defence exhibition was taking place, according to attendees including defence company officials.
Kravchenko said a war crimes case had been opened against Russia over Friday’s attack — as well as a criminal probe into “possible improper performance of official duties” related to the organisation of the event.
“War does not exempt one from responsibility for managerial decisions,” he said. “On the contrary, it requires maximum professionalism, caution and awareness.”
The investigation would “establish who made the decision to hold the event, who approved the location, time and format of its conduct, what security measures were planned and whether risks were properly assessed”, he said.
Valeriy Borovyk, founder of the defence company First Contact, told a Ukrainian TV channel that some of his employees had been present.
“The strike on one of the training grounds, where an arms exhibition was taking place, was very serious,” he said. “Our acquaintances were there. Unfortunately, we have casualties and destruction.”
Residents of Kyiv caught in the open during the working day dashed to underground metro stations and car parks to wait out the unusual attack — Russia typically launches strikes in the night to impede the capital’s defences.
The Ukrainian Council of Arms Manufacturers said in a statement that the strike “occurred at a location where representatives of the Ukrainian defence industry were located”.
“Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded,” it added.
It asked attendees to refrain from distributing photos, videos and any other information about the event and its location “that may harm people, the work of the defence forces or the investigation”.
It did not disclose the exact location of the event. However, an event advertised online by Armada, an association of manufacturers of unmanned systems and associated technologies, listed a “defence demo day & defence expo” set to take place near Kyiv on Friday.
“Organising mass military events in a ballistic strike zone in the open air = helping the Russians kill people,” Serhii Sternenko, a prominent former defence ministry adviser, wrote on X after the attack on Friday.
Russian forces have targeted similar defence exhibitions in Ukraine in the past. In August 2023, Russia struck the Taras Shevchenko Drama Theatre in central Chernihiv, 150km north of Kyiv, during a drone technology event, killing seven people and wounding more than 140 others.
In response, Ukrainian authorities imposed strict rules around the promotion of the events.
The attack on Friday came as Russia and Ukraine traded strikes on each other’s logistics hubs. Ukrainian long-range drones on Friday morning hit a warehouse belonging to Wildberries, a Russian online retail group similar to Amazon, near St Petersburg — the fifth attack on the company’s facilities in the past week.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Wildberries’ logistics network had been used to supply the Russian military with “drone components, navigation equipment and other gear”.
He said Ukraine’s deep-strike drone units had also hit “one of the key military enterprises in Russia’s Kirov” about 900km from the Ukrainian border, which supplied components for aircraft and missile systems that were used “in the massive attacks against our cities and communities”.
His forces also struck an oil facility nearly 1,350km inside Russia.
Meanwhile, Moscow’s forces hit a distribution centre used by the Ukrainian private postal service Nova Poshta in eastern Ukraine.
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