Head of Dmytrivka hromada drove to Myla to be with people: Taras Didych died at the strike site

Taras Didych, head of the Dmytrivka hromada, was killed overnight into 29 August in the village of Myla in the Bucha district. He had driven to the site of the Russian strike to be with local residents.

Anatolii Fedoruk, the mayor of Bucha, announced the death.

Didych was among the first to reach the village. Warehouses were burning on the grounds of a local enterprise, and explosions kept going off. The work lasted all night.

«Taras Tarasovych drove to the site of the night attack to be beside people and to help. And he died there himself», Anatolii Fedoruk wrote.

More than thirty years leading the hromada

Didych had headed the hromada since 1994. He knew every street and every village of it, noted Mykola Kalashnyk, Minister for Recovery.

«He was among the first to arrive at the site of the attack to help people. Because he could not do otherwise. The whole Kyiv region will miss him badly», Mykola Kalashnyk wrote.

Didych did not leave the hromada during the Russian occupation of the Kyiv region either. He stayed on the ground, supported residents and held the hromada together through its hardest weeks.

Fedoruk recalled their meeting on the Zhytomyr highway on 3 March 2022. He was carrying food to partly occupied Bucha then, and Didych was taking supplies to his own hromada.

«The Russians have already killed Hostomel village head Yurii Prylypko. They tortured Motyzhyn starosta Olha Sukhenko together with her husband and son», the mayor of Bucha recalled.

What happened in Myla

The strike on the enterprise came on 28 August at about 20:10. The hit started a large fire, and detonation followed.

One private house in Myla was destroyed and seven more were damaged. A fire engine and a care home for older people were damaged as well, the Bucha city council reported.

More than 200 people were evacuated from the site, among them children. Crews are still dealing with the fire, and the numbers of dead and injured are being verified.

The Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating the case under two articles. These are waging an aggressive war and official negligence. Investigators will check whether explosive materials were stored lawfully.

Earlier, the detonation in Myla began on the evening of 28 August.