Inside Ukraine's Weeklong Drone Campaign Against Russia's Amazon

The Scope of the Attacks

The drone campaign unfolded in escalating waves over eight days, with strikes reaching from the Moscow region to the Ural Mountains and occupied Crimea.

• July 18 (first wave): Drones struck Wildberries warehouses in Elektrostal (Moscow region) and the Tambov region. Russian officials reported at least one person killed and 61 others injured . Early internal estimates suggested 10–15% of the company's warehouse capacity was affected .
• July 21–22: Strikes hit Wildberries logistics hubs in Krasnodar and Stavropol (southern Russia), killing one person and injuring ten . The company's founder, Tatyana Kim, confirmed the attacks .
• July 24 (largest wave): Russia's Defense Ministry reported shooting down 571 Ukrainian drones overnight over 15 regions, Crimea, and the Black Sea . Wildberries facilities were hit near St. Petersburg (Novosaratovka), sparking a major fire, and a third facility in occupied Simferopol, Crimea was also struck .
• July 25 (Ural reach): Ukraine launched over 300 drones in a single night. A Wildberries warehouse in Yekaterinburg (Urals) temporarily halted operations .

By July 25, NPR reported this was at least the tenth Ukrainian drone strike against Wildberries in a single week .

Estimated Financial and Operational Damage

The economic toll was historic for a single commercial entity in the conflict.

• Warehouse square footage destroyed: 552,000 sq m (5.9 million sq ft) — roughly 10% of total Wildberries warehouse capacity, per calculations by the Russian business daily Kommersant .
• Economic damage: Russian analysts estimated total damage at up to 100 billion rubles (~$1.3 billion), making it one of the costliest strikes on Russia's commercial infrastructure since the war began .
• Operational impact: Large-scale fires forced mass evacuations of workers, disrupted one of Russia's largest e-commerce logistics networks, and caused cascading delivery delays for millions of consumers and sellers .

Wildberries' Ties to Senior Kremlin Officials

The company targeted by Ukraine is not a typical business — it is a key Kremlin-aligned economic entity.

• Tatyana Kim, Wildberries' founder and Russia's wealthiest woman, has deep connections to the Kremlin. At the June 2026 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, she was a key private partner of the state, signing demographic support agreements with regional governors and publicly appearing arm-in-arm with VTB bank head Andrei Kostin (a longtime Putin associate) .
• Wildberries and its financial arm, Wildberries Bank (sanctioned by the UK and EU), form the backbone of what the Kremlin calls the "platform economy" — central to Moscow's plans for economic growth amidst the war .
• The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed that the strikes hit the financial interests of figures in Putin's inner circle .
• Russian investigative outlet Sledstvie reported that Senator Suleyman Kerimov (a billionaire with known Kremlin ties) was involved in a murky 2024 deal to strip Kim of control over Wildberries, allegedly to conceal debts of 100 billion rubles .

Kyiv's Justification for the Strikes

Ukraine framed the campaign as a legitimate military action against infrastructure serving the Russian armed forces.

• President Zelensky stated the warehouses were used to "supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment" — i.e., as military logistics nodes operating under a civilian facade .
• Serhii Kuzan (Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre) argued that Wildberries acts as a "grey-zone logistics channel" importing dual-use electronics and drone parts that bypass Western sanctions and directly supply the Russian military .
• Kyiv framed the strikes as retaliatory — in response to "Russian strikes on our civilian infrastructure and on our cities" .

The Kremlin and Kim deny these allegations, calling the targeting of Wildberries an act of terrorism .

The Backlash Inside Russia

The campaign created immediate and visible domestic friction.

• Casualties among Russian civilians and workers fueled domestic anger: the July 18 strike alone killed 1 and injured 61 ; the July 22 strike killed 1 and injured 10 ; the July 24 strike near St. Petersburg injured 3 . NR reported at least nine workers dead by the end of the week .
• The Wall Street Journal reported that the drone campaign "brought the war home to Russia's middle class" — a deliberate strategic effect, as Wildberries is deeply embedded in everyday Russian life .
• Russian state media and pro-war Telegram channels ran intense coverage of the burning warehouses, with some expressing outrage that the military had failed to protect civilian commercial infrastructure .
• The attacks created a visible consumer impact: millions of Russians faced canceled or delayed orders, and sellers lost inventory worth billions of rubles . This pressured the Kremlin to address domestic economic disruption alongside the war effort . Some Russian business owners reacted with anger and, in some cases, called for an end to the war .