Ukrainian drones hit two sites in the Russian city of Ryazan on the morning of 29 July, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported, sharing footage of the drones and fires. An oil refinery and a warehouse of Russia's biggest online marketplace both caught fire, and the retailer closed the site and moved its people out. Ukrainian forces also struck the southern city of Taganrog overnight, and another refinery fire surfaced hours later in the Urals.

Drones over the city from before dawn

An air-raid alert went off in Ryazan at 04:30, and drones kept appearing over the city afterward. Ryazan lies about 460 km from Ukraine's border, southeast of Moscow. Eyewitness videos showed drones and the fires that started after the impacts. Open-source channels then narrowed the targets down to a marketplace sorting complex and the local refinery. Exilenova+ shared videos a large fire at the complex with thick smoke above it. 

Governor Pavel Malkov confirmed the attack. His first message stated that a fire had broken out at one of the enterprises, without naming it. He wrote later that "as a result of falling UAV debris there is a fire in industrial areas." The same post repeated the ban on publishing photos and video of strike aftermath.

Russian news Telegram channel Astra confirmed the hit on the Wildberries logistics center. The complex stands in the Ryazansky industrial park near the village of Tyushevo, in Ryazan municipal district. Wildberries also lists the site as Ryazan: Tyushevskaya. Astra's open-source analysts placed the fire there after examining frames filmed by witnesses.

Explore further

Russia and Ukraine justify their strikes the same way. Only one justification holds up

Sources put the facility's area at about 74,800 m² and call the site one of the marketplace's largest logistics complexes in central Russia. Militarnyi noted Ukraine's Defense Forces flew FP-1 drones made by the company Fire Point.

Rosneft's plant took another hit

Exilenova+ also noted a blaze at Rosneft's Ryazan refinery, which paused crude processing in mid-May after an earlier drone attack. Reports of explosions on the grounds came first, and confirmation of a fire followed. The consequences were still being clarified. The plant belongs to Rosneft and ranks among Russia's largest oil-processing enterprises, with capacity near 17 million tons of crude a year. 

Taganrog and Perm

Ukrainian forces struck Taganrog in Rostov Oblast overnight, and residents there wrote about it on social media. Governor Yuri Slyusar claimed a missile strike. He stated that "as a result of missile debris falling on a residential apartment building, a woman was killed and a man was injured." 

At 10:00 that same morning, Exilenova+ posted about a fire in Perm, at the Lukoil-Permnefteorgsintez refinery more than 1,500 km from Ukraine, showing black smoke rising over the facility.

Deep-strike campaign

Ukrainian forces have struck every large Russian refinery since the start of the year, and gasoline output in early July dropped to 65% of average summer consumption.

Strikes on Wildberries logistics centers began on 18 July. Drones have since burned warehouses in Moscow Oblast, Tambov Oblast, Krasnodar, Stavropol Krai, Leningrad Oblast, St. Petersburg, Voronezh, and occupied Crimea. On the morning of 20 July, FP-1s struck two logistics sites in Moscow Oblast, the Wildberries distribution center in the village of Koledino and the Yuzhnye Vrata logistics park near Domodedovo, and both went up in flames. Drones returned to the Koledino area on 28 July, where monitors judged that air-defense fire probably pushed the hit onto a third-party warehouse next door.

One reason drones keep coming for the marketplace is what its warehouses hold. It sells and stores goods for military use, among them helmets, body armor, and fiber-optic cable for drones. The company had built a section called "Everything for the SVO," the Kremlin's shorthand for its war against Ukraine, and removed it from the site and the app days ago.