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First warehouses burned, now payment system is down: Ukraine launches dual campaign against Russia’s largest marketplace that reportedly moves drone parts

15 août 2026 à 06:34

russian refinery makes jet fuel moscow's warplanes—and ukraine keeps setting fire · post black smoke rises over burning wildberries logistics complex leningrad oblast after ukrainian drone strike 4 2026 5445360929345313906

Ukraine has hit Russia's biggest marketplace in cyberspace as well as with drones. Cyber specialists disrupted Wildberries' operations across Russia, Ukraine's Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) reports.

Ukraine says that Wildberries is not ordinary commerce but a piece of Russia's war logistics. According to the military command, the network moves military-related goods, and President Zelenskyy has said Russia uses the platform to bring in sanctioned drone components, which is why Ukraine has spent weeks burning its warehouses and now strikes its servers.

HUR reports that on 10 and 11 August, specialists from the Cyber Corps community attacked Wildberries' digital infrastructure, causing failures in its payment and customer service systems.

The attack hit payments and support

The disruption struck where customers feel it. Because of the problems with the payment infrastructure, users complained they could not complete certain transactions.

For a platform whose whole value is the frictionless movement of goods and money, a payment system that will not process transactions is a direct hit to the business.

The strain spread to customer service. At the same time, the load on the support service rose, causing failures in the contact centers, so the attack degraded both the ability to pay and the ability to get help across Russia.

It pairs with the warehouse strikes

In July, Ukrainian drones destroyed eight Wildberries warehouses, about 15.4% of the marketplace's storage.

Pairing strikes on physical infrastructure with Ukrainian cyber operations strengthens the pressure on the company, HUR assessed.

The logic is to squeeze the same target from two directions at once: burn the warehouses that store the goods, then disable the systems that move them to customers, so damage in one domain amplifies damage in the other.

Earlier, Ukraine hit the Progress Rocket Space Center in Samara, which builds Soyuz-2 rockets used to launch Rassvet, Russia’s planned alternative to Starlink.

  • ✇Euromaidan Press
  • Ukrainian drones hit Wildberries warehouse in Tver for the third time in two weeks
    Ukrainian drones struck a Wildberries logistics warehouse in Russia's Tver Oblast overnight into 14 August, damaging a wall for the third time in two weeks, regional governor Vitaly Korolev said. No one was hurt, and Wildberries said the goods stored there survived. The Emmaus facility, built on a roughly 77,000-square-meter footprint about 150 km from Moscow, has become a fixture in a Ukrainian long-range drone campaign against Wildberries, Russia's largest online reta
     

Ukrainian drones hit Wildberries warehouse in Tver for the third time in two weeks

14 août 2026 à 04:21

Ukrainian drones struck a Wildberries logistics warehouse in Russia's Tver Oblast overnight into 14 August, damaging a wall for the third time in two weeks, regional governor Vitaly Korolev said. No one was hurt, and Wildberries said the goods stored there survived.

The Emmaus facility, built on a roughly 77,000-square-meter footprint about 150 km from Moscow, has become a fixture in a Ukrainian long-range drone campaign against Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, now in its fifth week. Since 18 July, Ukraine has hit more than 20 of the company's logistics sites, according to Russian outlet Agentstvo, part of a declared operation President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on 25 June to pressure the Kremlin toward ending the war.

What happened in Tver

Korolev said drone debris damaged the wall of the Wildberries warehouse building in the Kalininsky district overnight, and that the resulting smoke was "promptly extinguished." No warehouse staff were injured, he said. Wildberries confirmed "minor damage" to the logistics complex and said the fire's aftermath was "promptly eliminated," adding that "the goods were not affected."

It is the third reported strike on a Wildberries facility in the Emmaus area in under two weeks. Drones first hit the site on 4 August, damaging a wall, and returned on 6 August, damaging the facade — though Tver governor Korolev did not confirm at the time whether the two strikes hit the same building. Ukrainian monitoring channel Supernova+ has said the repeated, inconclusive strikes mean Ukrainian forces are likely to keep coming back until the hub is disabled.

A campaign built on repetition, not precision

The Tver hub is a minor player in a campaign that has concentrated on Wildberries' largest distribution centers — Koledino outside Moscow, Khryastovo in Vladimir Oblast, Oleksin in Tula Oblast — each spanning well over 100,000 square meters and each hit with enough force to halt operations for days. By contrast, all three Tver strikes have caused only minor structural damage with no confirmed disruption to the warehouse's operations.

That gap matters for how the campaign is read. Euromaidan Press has reported that Ukraine has concentrated its drones on roughly two dozen hubs that move most of Wildberries' goods, while hundreds of smaller depots — Tver likely among them — remain largely untouched or only lightly damaged. Measured against the whole network, the physical loss looks modest; measured against the major hubs Ukraine has targeted, more than half are out of action.

The financial pressure has outpaced the physical damage. Wildberries has been scouting storage space in Kazakhstan beyond the reach of Ukrainian drones, and the Kremlin has been weighing state loans to keep the company solvent, at a point when Russia's federal deficit had already outrun the full-year shortfall the Treasury had budgeted. Ukrainian officials and Estonian military intelligence say Wildberries' warehouses store and move military-linked goods, including body armor and drone parts sold on the platform — a claim Wildberries denies.

  • ✇Euromaidan Press
  • Is a fifth or well over half of Wildberries gone—or can both counts be right?
    Since mid-July, Ukrainian drones have burned their way through the warehouses of Wildberries, Russia’s answer to Amazon, and how much of it is gone has become a question with too many answers.Estimates in circulation range from a fifth of the company’s network to well over half, and they clash because each counts something different. Only by sorting out what each figure measures can you see what the campaign has actually done—and what it has done is heavier, where it co
     

Is a fifth or well over half of Wildberries gone—or can both counts be right?

13 août 2026 à 11:38

logistics centre in Bashkortostan, Russia,

Since mid-July, Ukrainian drones have burned their way through the warehouses of Wildberries, Russia’s answer to Amazon, and how much of it is gone has become a question with too many answers.

Estimates in circulation range from a fifth of the company’s network to well over half, and they clash because each counts something different.

Only by sorting out what each figure measures can you see what the campaign has actually done—and what it has done is heavier, where it counts, than the modest numbers suggest.

Ukraine has concentrated its drones on a couple of dozen hubs that move most of the goods, while the hundreds of small depots that pad the total remain mostly untouched.

Wildberries’ network is scattered across hundreds of small sorting points that would hardly be missed if one burned.

Wildberries is no marginal target. Nearly half of everything Russians buy online runs through it, a marketplace as woven into daily life there as Amazon is in the West. And Kyiv is not burning it for the sneakers.

Estonian military intelligence reports that Wildberries, though not a military firm, supplies the Russian armed forces with kit bought straight off the platform—body armor and drone parts—a case Ukraine makes too. Wildberries denies it.

Yet once the strikes began, the company pulled its “SVO” tag, the label that had gathered those goods in one place, while the goods stayed on sale under other categories; it also barred warehouse workers from carrying camera phones.

drones hit volgograd kept flying 1100 km tatarstan · post large fire black smoke over russia after ukrainian drone strike wildberries logistics center 31 2026 exilenova+ ukraine news reports
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Russia’s largest retailer is taking cameras away from its own workers month after eight of its warehouses burned

Count the hubs, and the damage jumps

The clash comes down to the word “network.” Most of Wildberries’ floor space is scattered across small sorting points that would hardly be missed if one burned. Set the damage against all of it, and the loss—about a fifth—looks minor.

But the parcels move through these two dozen hubs that hold more than half the company’s space, and those are the ones Ukraine has hit: more than a third are damaged, and by another count, well over half are out of action. It is the same campaign counted in two ways, and only the second shows its aim.

The gap between a building’s size and its damage is easy to miss, and the biggest hub shows how. Koledino, outside Moscow, covers more than 200,000 square meters, and that number keeps getting logged as a loss.

It shouldn’t be. When a drone came down there on 28 July, the fire took a neighboring warehouse—a separate operator that stocks shelves for chains like Lenta and Auchan—while the Wildberries hub kept working.

depending on how to count, ukraine has taken out either a fifth or well over half wildberries warehouses
Ukraine has concentrated its drone strikes on the major hubs that move most of Russia's goods. Measured against all 200-plus Wildberries warehouses, the damage looks like a blip; measured against the largest hubs, it takes out well over half. Chart: Agentstvo via Kyiv Post / independent monitoring / Euromaidan Press · Produced with Claude

Damage reaches beyond the warehouses

The Wildberries strikes are one arm of a declared campaign. On 25 June, Zelenskyy announced a 40-day operation to pressure Russia to end the war.

The warehouse strikes began on 18 July near Moscow and have since spread across a dozen regions, reaching as far as Yekaterinburg in the Urals.

The cost runs beyond floor space. At least eight people have been killed in the strikes so far—warehouse staff and residents caught near the hubs when the drones came down. And the pressure is pushing the company outward: Wildberries is scouting for storage in Kazakhstan, hunting warehouse space beyond the reach of Ukrainian drones.

drones hit volgograd kept flying 1100 km tatarstan · post large fire sends up black smoke over russia after ukrainian drone strike wildberries logistics center 31 2026 x/@bayraktar_1love bayraktar_1love hoivgso
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Ukraine’s strikes gave Kazakhstan leverage over Russian retail giant Wildberries

The fires have become a line in Russia’s budget. The Kremlin is weighing state loans to keep Wildberries upright—at a point when the federal deficit had, halfway through 2026, already outrun the shortfall the Treasury set aside for the entire year.

Oil and gas revenue, the Kremlin’s main source of war funding, keeps falling short. Russia appears unwilling to let a company this central fail. Paying to save it, hub by burned hub, is the bill Ukraine is now handing Moscow.

  • ✇Euromaidan Press
  • Ukraine strikes Gazprom’s Salavat refinery again as Russia’s fuel shortages return in 16 regions
    Ukrainian drones struck the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil-refining and petrochemical complex in Russia's Bashkortostan on the morning of 13 August, setting off a fire — the second strike on one of Russia's largest refineries in a month. The repeat hit lands as Ukraine's deep-strike campaign forces Russian refining to its lowest level since 2002 and pushes fuel shortages back into at least 16 regions, where drivers again face queues and sales limits at filling stations.
     

Ukraine strikes Gazprom’s Salavat refinery again as Russia’s fuel shortages return in 16 regions

13 août 2026 à 04:15

Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat

Ukrainian drones struck the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil-refining and petrochemical complex in Russia's Bashkortostan on the morning of 13 August, setting off a fire — the second strike on one of Russia's largest refineries in a month.

The repeat hit lands as Ukraine's deep-strike campaign forces Russian refining to its lowest level since 2002 and pushes fuel shortages back into at least 16 regions, where drivers again face queues and sales limits at filling stations. Striking the same plants faster than Moscow can repair them is the point — each return resets the clock on units that take weeks or months to rebuild.

What happened

Bashkortostan's head, Radiy Khabirov, confirmed that debris from a downed drone fell in Salavat's industrial zone and sparked a blaze, which he called a "terrorist attack." Ukrainian monitoring channels Exilenova+ and Supernova identified the target as the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat plant, and residents reported a column of black smoke over the site. Ukraine's military had not commented on the strike.

The complex is one of Russia's largest refining and petrochemical sites. It processed about 7.2 million tons of crude in 2024 — roughly 2.7% of Russia's total refining — and turns out gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ammonia, and more, according to Reuters, citing industry sources.

Ukrainian drones struck the same plant on 14 July, damaging two primary distillation units and halting operations; industry sources told Reuters the repairs could take weeks to months. Open-source data cited by Radio Svoboda places Russia's only heptyl rocket-fuel producer, the Salavat Chemical Plant, inside the same industrial perimeter, though there is no confirmation it was hit.

A campaign that keeps resetting repairs

Since early August, at least four refineries have stopped processing after Ukrainian strikes, including plants in Orenburg, Tyumen, Saratov, and Volgograd oblasts. Across 2026, attacks have interrupted work at no fewer than 26 refineries, seven of them still offline at the end of July, according to S&P Global.

Russian refining has fallen to about 3.6 million barrels a day, the lowest since 2002, per EA Analytics — the trigger for the fuel crisis now resurfacing. Shortages had eased by late July, but by mid-August residents of at least 16 regions were again reporting queues and sales restrictions, with Ai-92 and Ai-95 grades pulled from some Gazprom and Lukoil stations.

Attack on warehouse Wildberries

Drones also struck a Wildberries logistics center under construction in Bashkortostan's Chishminsky district, according to the monitoring channel Astra.

Wildberries is Russia's largest online retailer. The hub—about 187,000 square meters—has been under construction since 2024 on the grounds of the "Center of Agrotechnologies" agropark.

  • ✇Euromaidan Press
  • Ukrainian drones set a newly opened Wildberries mega-hub ablaze near Voronezh
    Ukrainian drones struck a Wildberries logistics complex in Voronezh Oblast overnight into 11 August, setting off a massive fire at one of the Russian retailer's largest and newest hubs, according to Russian and Ukrainian monitoring channels. Voronezh Oblast Governor Alexander Gusev said one person was killed, a 49-year-old man who was outside during the attack, suffered severe wounds, and died in hospital. Two others were hospitalized, one caught outside and one on the
     

Ukrainian drones set a newly opened Wildberries mega-hub ablaze near Voronezh

11 août 2026 à 04:55

Russia's Voronezh Oblast

Ukrainian drones struck a Wildberries logistics complex in Voronezh Oblast overnight into 11 August, setting off a massive fire at one of the Russian retailer's largest and newest hubs, according to Russian and Ukrainian monitoring channels.

Voronezh Oblast Governor Alexander Gusev said one person was killed, a 49-year-old man who was outside during the attack, suffered severe wounds, and died in hospital. Two others were hospitalized, one caught outside and one on the grounds of the logistics center.

Gusev reported fires at two warehouses in the Novousmansky district, with firefighters containing one blaze across about 16,000 square meters and battling another over roughly 20,000 square meters. Debris also damaged three trucks and a car, he said. Russian outlet Astra and Ukrainian monitoring channels identified the site as a Wildberries complex, which Gusev did not name, placing it at the village of Aleksandrovka.

The struck hub opened fully in late 2025, spans about 152,900 square meters, and can hold more than 90 mn items. Wildberries said it had evacuated staff at its logistics sites across the oblast in line with safety requirements. Gusev claimed Russian air defenses detected and destroyed 15 drones over Voronezh and five districts of the oblast.

The strike is the latest in a widening Ukrainian long-range campaign against Wildberries, described by Ukrainian officials as Russia's answer to Amazon and targeted, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, because the platform helps supply the Russian military with parts for drones and other equipment. Russia rejects the claim.

Ukraine had already hit its 16th Wildberries warehouse in under three weeks by 5 August, when drones set fire to a logistics center in Oleksin, Tula Oblast.

Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi said on 4 August that the campaign had struck 15 sites in 18 days, thirteen of them knocked out of action or seriously damaged. Russian outlet Agentstvo put the count at more than 20 warehouses since mid-July. On 7 August, drones reached a Wildberries hub in Yekaterinburg, more than 1,700 kilometers from Ukraine, and earlier fires hit sites in Moscow Oblast, Tambov Oblast, Krasnodar, Stavropol Krai, Leningrad Oblast, St. Petersburg, and occupied Crimea, as well as Voronezh Oblast itself. Estonian military intelligence has estimated the strikes have caused up to $2 bn in direct damage

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