Ukraine strikes Wildberries warehouses in Russia, killing at least eight

Ukrainian drone strikes on two Wildberries logistics centers killed at least eight people and injured more than 60, pushing the war deeper into Russia’s civilian supply network and raising the stakes around dual-use targets. One warehouse in Elektrostal, in the Moscow region, and another in Tambov region’s Kotovsk were struck on July 18, setting off large fires and thick smoke at both sites.

Russian officials said seven of the dead were night-shift workers at one warehouse and one worker died at the other. They also said 25 people were injured at the Tambov site and 37 at Elektrostal, where Wildberries operates its largest warehouse in Russia. That facility spans more than 360,000 square meters, or about 3.9 million square feet, underscoring the scale of the logistics network now exposed to the air war.

Wildberries is Russia’s biggest online retailer and is often described as the country’s equivalent of Amazon. The attacks on its warehouses mark a sharper turn in Ukraine’s long-range campaign: the targets were not military bases, but major commercial distribution hubs embedded in the broader wartime economy. Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes hit warehouses holding components used to make drones, linking the attack directly to Russia’s military production chain.

The damage also spilled into surrounding civilian areas. A nearby kindergarten building was reported damaged in the Moscow-region strike, a detail that complicates the already fraught debate over whether warehouses used for storage and assembly support should be treated as legitimate military targets. The scale of the fires and smoke plumes at both sites suggested a strike on infrastructure designed for high-volume movement of goods, not a small depot.

Wildberries said it would compensate for destroyed goods. Early estimates of the company’s losses and those of its sellers ranged into the tens of billions of roubles, with some reporting placing potential losses as high as 100 billion roubles. For a retail chain that moves consumer products across Russia, the hit extends beyond one company balance sheet to suppliers, sellers and delivery schedules.

The deaths made the attack one of the deadliest Ukrainian strikes inside Russia in two years, and it showed how the air war is now reaching far beyond oil depots and military installations. By hitting warehouse infrastructure tied to both commerce and drone components, Kyiv has widened the battlefield to the logistics systems that keep Russia’s wartime economy moving.