Ukraine expands deep strikes to Russian Wildberries warehouses

Ukraine has broadened its long-range strike campaign to include warehouses belonging to the Russian retail giant Wildberries, according to a Western official. This new target set is being pursued alongside Ukraine's continued campaign against Russia's oil infrastructure.

Growing Effectiveness of Ukrainian Deep Strikes

Asked about the recent wave of air attacks and Ukraine's ability to strike back, a Western official said Ukrainian deep strikes were becoming more effective "both in terms of range, volume, and expanded target sets," citing "the strikes on the Wildberries warehouses over the past couple of weeks."

The official noted that Russia's difficulty in defending against these strikes was striking, describing it as "notable, given the relative paucity in air defence" — qualifying that as relative to "the number of sites that they now have to defend." The effect, the official added, was political as much as military: "This is starting to bring the war home to the average Russian."

Timeline of Strikes on Wildberries Facilities

The campaign against the retailer has run through much of July:

• 18 July: First strikes hit facilities in Elektrostal (outside Moscow) and Tambov Oblast. The Moscow Times reported eight workers killed in the weekend attacks. Russian industry experts estimated the cost of restoring damaged facilities at up to 35.8 billion rubles (approximately $457 million).
• Subsequent strikes: Targeted logistics hubs in Krasnodar and other southern regions, followed by warehouses in and around St. Petersburg and in Simferopol in occupied Crimea.

Scale of Damage

• The Kyiv Independent reported that seven warehouses had been hit within a week.
• Russian outlet Kommersant estimated that roughly 10% of the company's logistics hubs had been damaged by 23 July.
• NPR reported at least nine workers killed across the strikes, several of them migrant workers from Central Asia.
• Small Russian businesses described heavy losses of stock held in the destroyed facilities.

Rationale Behind the Shift to Warehousing

A Western official pointed to Ukraine's stated justification for the new targeting strategy:

"Wildberries has a role in the supply chain and military industrial complex, and that's the logic behind their attacks," the official said, while noting the strikes also carried "a sort of big PR impact." As "a sort of big systemic company in the Russian market," the official added, Wildberries "probably has an outsized economic impact too."

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the strikes targeted logistics centres involved in supplying the Russian army with drone components and navigation equipment. He framed them as a response to Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure — an apparent reference to strikes on facilities belonging to the Ukrainian postal and logistics company Nova Poshta in Odesa and Mykolaiv, according to the Moscow Times.

About Wildberries

Wildberries is Russia's largest online retailer, founded in 2004 and often compared to Amazon. According to estimates cited by the Kyiv Independent, the company accounts for close to half of Russia's online retail market. It operates a network of more than 200 warehouses and logistics centres across Russia. Its founder, Tatyana Kim, has been ranked Russia's wealthiest woman.

Kim has said the company's insurance policies did not cover drone strikes, and that goods were being redistributed across remaining warehouses to keep deliveries running, according to reporting by Forbes and NBC News.

Continuation of Existing Campaign

The official was careful to stress that the move did not come at the expense of the existing campaign against Russia's oil infrastructure:

"It's not either or, so it's not binary. The targeting of the oil system continues. It's just this is an additional target set which has been prosecuted at the same time."

Broader Context

Ukraine's long-range campaign inside Russia has grown steadily in reach and tempo since 2023, with oil refineries, fuel depots, airfields, and defence plants prominent among the targets.