Ukraine burned down a seventh of Russia's largest online retailer in a month. Over July, Ukrainian drones destroyed eight Wildberries warehouses with a total area of about 860,000 square meters, the independent Russian outlet Verstka calculated.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has explained the strikes on the "Russian AliExpress" by saying that Moscow uses the platform to bring in sanctioned drone and navigation components. Ukraine's military command lists Wildberries among its long-range targets as a retailer that also moves non-lethal military gear.

The single largest loss for the company was the warehouse in Elektrostal near Moscow, where a 250,000-square-meter facility burned after the 18 July attack, and one marketplace employee was killed.

The strikes are Ukraine's answer to a Russian campaign that has spent months hitting the sorting centers and branches of Ukraine's own delivery companies, Nova Poshta and Ukrposhta.

The tally, warehouse by warehouse

Overall, Ukraine destroyed roughly 15.4% of the marketplace's storage space, totaling 5.6 million square meters, Verstka says.

The outlet has built its figure from the individual strikes across the month. Another roughly 170,000 square meters of the company's premises came under drone attack on 29 July in Ryazan, where, judging by photos and video from the scene, the warehouse was completely engulfed in flames.

Not every strike was successful

Four more warehouses of 100,000 to 108,000 square meters burned after drone attacks: in Kotovsk in Tambov Oblast, in Krasnodar, in Nevinnomyssk in Stavropol Krai, and in the Shushary district of St. Petersburg. Fires also broke out at Wildberries warehouses after drone strikes in St. Petersburg's Utkina Zavod district, about 16,900 square meters, and in temporarily occupied Simferopol, about 6,000 square meters.

Not every strike succeeded. Attacks on facilities in Koledino near Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Voronezh, and Zelenodolsk in Tatarstan did not cause fires. In Voronezh, the drones damaged a warehouse roof, and in Yekaterinburg, they fell in a parking lot.