Drone attack sets fire to Wildberries warehouse near St. Petersburg

A drone strike set fire to a Wildberries warehouse near St. Petersburg, injuring three people and hitting one of Russia’s biggest e-commerce hubs. Leningrad region governor Alexander Drozdenko said the warehouse burned after a Ukrainian drone attack, placing civilian commercial infrastructure directly in the path of the war.

The fire mattered because Wildberries is not a minor local operator. It is Russia’s leading online retailer, and its warehouses sit at the center of a network that handles shipments, returns and fulfillment at scale. Even when damage is contained, a fire at a logistics facility can interrupt deliveries, strain inventory management and slow the flow of goods to consumers far from the front lines.

The strike came amid a run of attacks on Wildberries sites and other industrial targets inside Russia. On July 23, Wildberries halted operations at one of its warehouses after a Ukrainian drone attack overnight. A day earlier, the company said more of its warehouses had been attacked and several people were injured. On July 21, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukrainian attacks on Wildberries warehouses had hurt the company, an acknowledgment that the fighting was already imposing costs on a major civilian business.

The pressure on logistics sites had also turned deadly before the St. Petersburg fire. On July 18, Ukrainian drone attacks killed seven warehouse workers in Russia and sparked a fire at a Moscow region oil depot. Separately, Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobyov said 24 people were injured in a drone strike on a Wildberries warehouse in Elektrostal. Taken together, the incidents show that warehouses, depots and other supply-chain nodes have become recurring targets.

The St. Petersburg blaze also revived memories of an earlier warehouse fire at the same company’s site in the city. In January 2024, a Wildberries warehouse fire in St. Petersburg spread across up to 70,000 square metres, and nearly 300 firefighters battled the flames. Staff were evacuated in time and no injuries were reported in that fire, a stark contrast with the latest attack, which left people hurt as well as property damaged.

For Russian authorities, the pattern is awkward because it cuts against the Kremlin’s message that daily economic life remains insulated from the war. A warehouse fire near one of the country’s major cities made that distance harder to sustain, showing how drones can reach the logistics arteries that keep civilian commerce moving.