Russia has threatened Britain with “consequences” over reports that Ukrainian forces used drones manufactured by UK companies to carry out strikes inside Russia.

The Russian Embassy in London accused the UK of deliberately escalating the war by supporting Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign, saying Britain was seeking to “contain Russia and inflict maximum damage on it by proxy.” It warned that the deeper Britain becomes involved, “the higher the price it will pay.”

The threat followed news that Ukrainian forces had used two British-built drone systems to strike targets inside Russia for the first time. The Sunday Times, citing Ukrainian military sources, reported that the drones had been used against targets including oil refineries in Volgograd and Yaroslavl over the past six months.

Moscow warns Britain of “consequences”

The Russian Embassy said in a statement that the reported use of British-made drones “confirms that London is deliberately opting for an escalation of the Ukraine crisis.”

It warned that British actions would “inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer,” without specifying what form those consequences could take.

The warning comes as Ukraine has significantly expanded its long-range strike campaign against Russian military and energy targets. Kyiv has increasingly used large drone swarms to hit targets deep inside Russia, seeking to disrupt military production, logistics, and energy revenues while forcing Moscow to spread its air defenses across a much larger area.

Burnham says UK will continue backing Ukraine

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham rejected Moscow’s warning, saying Britain would continue supporting Ukraine despite Russian threats, The Independent reported on Tuesday.

“This is the UK doing what it has long said it would do, which is to support Ukraine 100 per cent against this illegal war led by Vladimir Putin,” Burnham said during a visit to Wolverhampton.

“We are providing support so that Ukraine can defend itself,” he said, adding: “We are not fair weather friends. We will be there in Ukraine’s hour of need, and that won’t change.”

UK Work and Pensions Minister Lilian Greenwood similarly said Britain’s resolve to support Ukraine remained “completely steadfast” and that the country would continue providing the military equipment Kyiv needs.

The UK Ministry of Defence also said Russia should have “no doubt” about the government's resolve to oppose Russian aggression in Ukraine and against Britain and its allies.

British drones expand Ukraine’s deep-strike capabilities

According to The Sunday Times, one of the British systems used by Ukraine is the Nyan, a jet-powered one-way attack drone produced by BAE Systems subsidiary Callen-Lenz, with a reported range of more than 150 miles.

The second system has a reported range exceeding 600 miles, although its manufacturer was not identified for security reasons. The drones provide Ukraine with additional long-range strike capacity that can be produced and deployed in larger numbers than more expensive Western cruise missiles.

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British drones hit Russia for first time in Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign – The Sunday Times

The reported deployment marks a further expansion of UK military support for Ukraine as Kyiv increasingly takes the fight to Russian military and energy infrastructure inside Russia.

Russia's most-used mapping service has digitally hidden a military missile site near Finland by copying a fake forest over it on satellite imagery, Finnish public broadcaster Yle reported. Western map services still show the same position, and a Finnish military analyst called the concealment careless and self-defeating. The clumsy edit points to Moscow's growing fear of Ukrainian drones.

What Yandex tried to erase

The concealed site sits beside the Kronstadt naval base, on Kotlin Island off St. Petersburg in the Gulf of Finland. Editing software copied trees from another image and laid them over the missile position. Until now, Russia mostly blurred sensitive locations rather than deleting them, but this edit tries to hide the target's existence outright. The same battery still appears on Google, Apple, and Microsoft satellite maps. In the covered zone, Russia has previously kept Bastion anti-ship missiles and their radar and reconnaissance systems.

A cover-up that gives itself away

Marko Eklund, a military expert and former Finnish intelligence officer, called the secrecy pointless. Western and Ukrainian analysts read their own satellite images, not Yandex, so the edit protects nothing in practice. He believes an administrative order drove it, and that the work was done sloppily. Anyone who knows what to look for can spot the seams and repeating patterns. 

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Kronstadt, Russia’s major naval Base after Black Sea Fleet losses, gets hit by Ukrainian drones (VIDEO)

A pattern set by Ukraine's drones

Russia's map cover-ups have tracked Ukraine's deep strikes. A Moscow court ordered Yandex to mask an oil refinery in Ryazan in 2024 after repeated Ukrainian strikes, and a Nordic-Baltic investigation later counted 119 blurred sites near Russia's northwestern border. Blurring shows up at once, while cloned forest hides the tampering itself.

Kronstadt gives Russia one of its main Baltic Fleet bases, and Ukraine's drones have already reached it. In early June, they set a Russian missile corvette ablaze in dry dock there.

A drone hit a major Wildberries warehouse at Koledino near Moscow overnight on 16 August 2026 and set it ablaze, Moscow Oblast Governor Andrey Vorobyov said. Vorobyov described the overnight swarm as “one of the most massive drone attacks in recent times.”

It comes amid an expanding Ukrainian campaign against Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer with a vast network of warehouses and logistics centers, that has reached warehouses from Moscow Oblast to the Urals. Ukrainian authorities say Wildberries facilities are used to supply components for Russian drone production and navigation equipment, making them part of Russia’s wartime logistics network.

The Koledino fire puts a major part of Wildberries’ storage and sorting capacity at risk. At about 250,000 square meters, the complex is one of the retailer’s largest logistics hubs. Ukrainian sources say the marketplace has moved drone parts and other military-linked goods. Wildberries denies supporting Russia’s military. 

Wildberries’ parent company, RWB, confirmed the fire, saying workers had been evacuated and deliveries rerouted. 

Unlike the 28 July fire at Koledino industrial park, the latest blaze was confirmed at Wildberries’ own Koledino warehouse. Initial reports in July had also pointed to Wildberries, but open-source investigators later identified the burning building as a neighboring warehouse run by a third-party logistics company.

A second fire broke out at Warehouse No. 15 in MLP Severnoye Domodedovo, a multimodal logistics complex near one of Moscow’s main airports. Vorobyov said the warehouse stores medications.

Vorobyov claimed an 83-year-old man was killed after a drone fell on a private home in the Ramenskoye district, while at least six other people were injured across the region.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin claimed that Russian air defenses destroyed 201 drones approaching the region.

Ukraine confirms Wildberries warehouse was targeted

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry confirmed that the Wildberries logistics hub in the Koledino industrial park was put out of operation during the overnight drone attack.

The ministry said the facility, which covered 250,000 square meters, was Wildberries’ largest warehouse by area. It also said Ukraine has now disabled seven of the company’s 10 largest logistics centers.

Ukraine’s campaign against Wildberries keeps growing

Ukraine’s campaign against Wildberries began on 18 July 2026, when drones struck warehouses in Elektrostal and Kotovsk. Reported attacks have since reached the retailer’s sites across Russia, including a newly opened hub near Voronezh and a warehouse in Tver targeted three times in two weeks.

By 14 August, Agentstvo had counted fires at more than 20 Wildberries sites. The sustained attacks had already prompted Wildberries to prohibit warehouse workers from bringing smartphones to work, citing concerns that photos and videos taken during drone alerts could pose a security risk. 

The effects on Russia’s economy

The number and geographic spread of Ukraine’s strikes have put sustained pressure on the retailer’s nationwide warehouse network and Russia’s economy at large. 

Earlier fires destroyed goods belonging to independent sellers, The Moscow Times reported. Wildberries said it was considering compensation, although its contracts do not require the company to cover losses caused by drone attacks. 

In response to Ukraine’s strikes, the company has also reportedly sought additional storage in Kazakhstan, giving local warehouse operators greater leverage as it tries to replace capacity lost in Russia.

The physical disruption was followed on 15 August by a Ukrainian cyberattack targeting Wildberries’ payment and customer service systems. The hackers said customers could not make payments or reach the company through its main online support channel. 

Russia is trying to knock out Ukraine's gas production before the cold comes. Russia carried out massive strikes on the assets of the Naftogaz Group in eastern, western, and central Ukraine, the company reported.

The strikes target Ukraine's ability to produce the gas it needs for winter. The Russians aim to inflict maximum damage on Ukrainian production and other critical infrastructure to make preparation for the heating season impossible, acting Naftogaz chairman Serhii Fedorenko said, calling the intensity of attacks on oil-and-gas infrastructure sharply higher in recent days.

The strikes hit extraction across the country

Russia targeted the sites where Ukraine pulls gas from the ground. On the night of 9 August, the extraction assets of Ukrnafta and a company drilling site came under massive attack, with Russian forces using dozens of strike drones against the extraction infrastructure.

The damage stopped production. There is substantial destruction at the site; part of the equipment has been put out of commission, and the asset's operation has been halted. However, safety measures meant that workers at the attacked facilities were unhurt.

Fuel stations and production sites were also hit

The campaign extended to Naftogaz's retail and production network. On 7 and 8 August, seven UKRNAFTA filling complexes in Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolaiv oblasts came under drone attack, and a worker at one station was injured and is in hospital receiving care.

Central Ukraine was struck, too. On 8 August, Russia attacked Naftogaz production facilities in the central part of the country with jet-powered drones, and the facility suffered serious destruction, though staff were in shelter at the time of the strike.

The target is the heating season

The strikes match the warning from First Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal, who has said Russia's aim this winter is to destroy the systems Ukrainians need to survive the cold, from power to water, Politico reported. Damaging gas production now, months before winter, is meant to leave Ukraine unable to heat itself when temperatures drop, turning the coming season into another front against civilians in Russia's war.

Satellite imagery has confirmed that Ukraine's Defense Forces destroyed a Russian electronic-warfare system built to jam Starlink at Gelendzhik in southern Russia, the Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi reported. Ukrainian drones hit the machine on the grounds of a Russian border-guard base during their sweep of the Black Sea coast. It is one more of these costly jammers Russia has lost, even as Ukraine's long-range drones cannot use Starlink over Russia.

Satellites caught the before and after

Satellite images published by the OSINT community Dnipro Osint show the site cleared at Gelendzhik, in Russia's Krasnodar Krai. The Volna Kupol Garant complex is gone. Researchers called it the third destruction of this jammer recorded in open sources. The strike landed on the grounds of military unit 2156, the Novorossiysk border detachment of Russia's FSB Border Service.

Ukrainian drones likely hit it alongside a 7 August strike on cargo ships near Novorossiysk and Gelendzhik. Geolocated photos from residents point to a repeat strike on the base on 8 August.

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Ukraine’s newest drones don’t need Starlink. Russia spends $1.5 million to jam it anyway.

The Volna Kupol Garant is built from trailers carrying satellite antennas. It tracks a passing Starlink satellite and beams a strong signal that scrambles the terminals below across up to 20 km². Starlink is the SpaceX satellite-internet network that Ukrainian drones rely on to reach their operators. Each unit costs about $1.8 million. A same-named firm registered in occupied Simferopol builds it. The developer also makes the Volna 3M jammer that Russia has fitted to Mi-8AMTSh helicopters to block drone satellite navigation.

Ukraine has knocked out these jammers before. The 422nd Unmanned Systems Regiment, the Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU) Alpha special-operations center, and other Ukrainian units have struck such systems, including in occupied Crimea. The complex's weakness is its own power: beaming enough energy to reach a satellite makes it loud and easy to find. 

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Russians deploy massive $1.5M Starlink jammers, Ukrainians are blowing them up

And deep inside Russia, there is little Ukrainian Starlink to jam — SpaceX geofences the network to Ukrainian territory, and Elon Musk has refused Kyiv's push to use it for strikes into Russia so far.

The wider hunt

Ukraine's drone crews have spent 2026 tearing into Russia's air defenses and rear. The same run of Black Sea strikes that wrecked this jammer also burned a Russian S-400 air-defense system on the Gelendzhik coast.