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

• 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 .