- July 22, 2026
- 1:09 pm
- World News
Strikes on Wildberries logistics centers have become one of the most discussed episodes of the Ukrainian campaign to target facilities deep within Russia. For the first time, the target was not an oil refinery, a military airfield, or a defense industry enterprise, but infrastructure used daily by millions of ordinary Russians.
That is why the significance of these attacks goes far beyond the destroyed warehouse premises. Wildberries has long ceased to be just an online clothing store. It is the largest Russian marketplace, a vast transportation network, a goods storage system, a financial platform, and one of the main supply channels for Russian small businesses.
Through this same infrastructure pass electronics, communication means, equipment, and dual-use components that can be used by the Russian military and defense industry enterprises.
Four logistics centers in five days
The first series of strikes occurred on the night of July 18, 2026. Drones attacked Wildberries centers in Kotovsk, Tambov region, and Elektrostal, Moscow region.
At the Kotovsk warehouse, seven night shift employees were killed, and another 25 people were injured. In the Moscow region, where the Wildberries warehouse and an oil depot in Noginsk were simultaneously hit, Russian authorities reported 61 injured. One person later died from their injuries.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the strikes on two major logistics facilities. According to him, they were used for the supply of sanctioned components necessary for the production of Russian drones and navigation equipment. The Russian Kremlin denies this and insists that the warehouses served “exclusively the civilian market.”
However, already on July 22, 2026, the attacks continued. The new targets were Wildberries logistics centers in Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk, Stavropol Territory.
In Krasnodar, a large warehouse complex caught fire after the strike. Russian authorities reported ten injured, and more than a hundred firefighters and a helicopter were involved in extinguishing the fire. Several people were also injured in Nevinnomyssk. Videos of the large-scale fires were verified by Reuters.
Thus, in five days, four facilities of one company, located in different parts of Russia, were hit: in the central region, Moscow region, Krasnodar Territory, and the North Caucasus.
This allows us to speak not of a random choice of targets, but of a systematic attempt to disrupt the operation of one of Russia’s largest logistics networks.
Why Wildberries is strategically important
These are not ordinary warehouses
The Wildberries logistics center is not a hangar with boxes, but a high-tech hub combining storage, sorting, automated order processing, and shipping goods to dozens of regions.
The center in Elektrostal was one of the company’s most important facilities in the Moscow region. Its area was estimated at about 250,000 square meters. The warehouse in Kotovsk occupied about 108,000 square meters and served a significant part of southern and central Russia.
The Kotovsk complex was opened only in May 2025. It could simultaneously store up to 54 million units of goods. The company planned to use it to reduce transportation costs, speed up delivery, and provide regional sellers with the opportunity to ship products throughout Russia.
According to the Russian publication “Kommersant,” the first strikes on Elektrostal and Kotovsk temporarily disabled about 7% of all Wildberries logistics capacities. The cost of restoring the buildings alone was estimated at $270–450 million — not including the destroyed equipment and sellers’ goods.
It is impossible to completely paralyze Wildberries with two or four strikes. The company has dozens of distribution and sorting centers and can redistribute part of the orders.
But the loss of even a few of the largest hubs creates a cascading effect: neighboring warehouses become overloaded, routes lengthen, transportation costs rise, and delivery times increase.
Dual-use goods pass through the marketplace
Wildberries indeed offers a wide range of products that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.
Among such goods are civilian drones, drop mechanisms, flight controllers, electric motors, batteries, video transmitters, fiber optic coils for FPV drones, radios, antennas, thermal imagers, bulletproof vests, helmets, and tactical equipment.
The mere fact of selling such products does not prove that every Wildberries warehouse is a military facility. There are also no publicly available documents confirming a direct contract between the marketplace and the Russian Ministry of Defense.
However, the modern Russian supply system for the front is built not only on state defense orders. Volunteer groups, regional organizations, private drone manufacturers, Russian army units, and relatives of servicemen play a significant role in it.
They purchase the necessary equipment through regular online stores and marketplaces. Therefore, the line between civilian trade and military supply is becoming increasingly blurred.
The Ukrainian side claims that the affected centers were used not just for selling individual goods, but as links in the supply of sanctioned components for the production of drones and navigation systems. Independent data on the exact contents of each warehouse is still insufficient, but the presence of dual-use goods in Wildberries’ assortment is confirmed by open catalogs and journalistic checks.
Wildberries — the backbone of the Russian internet market
Calling Wildberries an absolute monopolist of all Russian retail would be incorrect. But the level of market concentration around Wildberries and Ozon is indeed enormous.
According to Data Insight, in the second half of 2024, Wildberries accounted for about 56% of all online orders in Russia and approximately 30% of the monetary volume of internet sales. Ozon accounted for another 21% of orders and 23% of turnover. Together, the two platforms controlled about 77% of the number of orders and more than half of the monetary volume of Russian e-commerce.
Today, more than a million sellers work through Wildberries, and the platform itself can process over 20 million orders a day.
The total volume of Russian internet trade in 2025 reached 11.5 trillion rubles, increasing by 28% over the year. The Russian market for goods ordered online numbered about 7.7 billion parcels.
Therefore, a strike on Wildberries is an impact not on a single private company. It affects a vast ecosystem of sellers, banks, carriers, pickup points, packaging manufacturers, and regional entrepreneurs.
As noted by NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency, the economic strength of the marketplace simultaneously became its vulnerability: the more goods and financial flows are concentrated in one system, the more painful the loss of each major distribution center becomes.
Small business pays the consequences of war
The main damage is not only borne by the Wildberries management.
The goods in the warehouses belong to hundreds and thousands of sellers. For a large company, the loss of part of the products may mean a decrease in profits, but for a small entrepreneur, it could mean the destruction of all stocks purchased on credit.
After the first strikes, Wildberries began discussing compensation for the owners of lost goods. The Russian Association of E-commerce Market Participants asked the government to provide affected entrepreneurs with a six-month tax deferral.
Among the affected were not only Russian companies. The Turkish clothing seller Koton reported that part of its products was also located at the damaged Wildberries facilities.
It became clear after the attacks how vulnerable sellers remain. Many of them did not insure their goods against military risks, and the terms of the marketplaces allow limiting liability for property destroyed as a result of hostilities or drone strikes.
It is impossible to claim that the strikes will immediately lead to the bankruptcy of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs. But for hundreds or thousands of sellers who stored a significant part of their stocks in the affected warehouses, the consequences could be critical.
Will the strikes drive up prices
In the short term, the attacks may increase the cost of delivering certain goods and cause delays in certain regions.
If such strikes continue, Wildberries and other Russian marketplaces will have to invest additional funds in security, anti-drone protection, insurance, construction of backup warehouses, and decentralization of stocks.
The company may partially pass these costs onto sellers through increased commissions, storage costs, and logistics tariffs. Sellers, in turn, will raise final prices.
There is currently no basis to claim that the attacks on four warehouses have already become an independent factor in nationwide inflation. But they create additional price pressure in an economy that is already bearing growing military expenses.
War has come to the Russian consumer rear
Kotovsk is located about 360 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Elektrostal is only 50 kilometers east of Moscow. The strikes on Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk expanded the geography of attacks even further.
From a military point of view, this forces Russia to protect not only airfields, oil refineries, and defense enterprises but also a vast network of commercial facilities.
It is impossible to install air defense systems near every warehouse, sorting center, railway hub, and industrial site. The more territories need to be covered, the more resources of the Russian air defense are dispersed.
But even more important is the psychological effect.
Damage to a military plant in a remote region may go unnoticed by most Russians. A strike on Wildberries immediately appears on the phone: the product disappears from sale, the order is delayed, the entrepreneur loses warehouse stocks, and the pickup point is left without supplies.
This is how war ceases to be a television story about events somewhere far away and becomes part of the everyday life of Russian society.
Reuters directly notes that the attacks on Wildberries may signify a new stage in the Ukrainian strategy: pressure on Russian military capabilities is simultaneously accompanied by an attempt to bring the consequences of the war into the lives of ordinary Russians.
Civilian object or part of military logistics
The question of the legality of such strikes cannot be resolved solely on the basis that Wildberries is a civilian company.
International humanitarian law defines a military target by two main criteria: the object must make an effective contribution to military actions, and its destruction must provide a definite military advantage. For dual-use objects, it is additionally necessary to consider possible harm to civilians and adhere to the principle of proportionality.
Therefore, the presence of bulletproof vests or drone parts on the marketplace does not in itself turn all the company’s warehouses into legitimate targets.
The decisive factors are intelligence data: what exactly was passing through a specific object, in what quantity, to whom it was intended, and how important its destruction was for disrupting military supply.
Publicly, Ukraine has disclosed only a general explanation — the supply of components for drones and navigation equipment. Full evidence allowing for an independent legal assessment of each strike is not yet available.
Meanwhile, since February 2022, Russia has repeatedly struck Ukrainian postal terminals, warehouses, energy facilities, and civilian infrastructure.
This does not negate the need to assess each Ukrainian operation from the perspective of international law and does not make the death of warehouse workers any less tragic. But it is the full-scale Russian invasion that created a reality in which civilian logistics systems are increasingly integrated into war support.
Why these strikes are truly important
The destruction of individual warehouses will not destroy the Russian economy and will not stop Wildberries. The company has enough resources to temporarily redirect goods and restore part of its operations.
The strategic significance lies in the cumulative effect.
Each destroyed center means lost goods, damaged equipment, new security expenses, overloaded routes, and the need to build a more expensive decentralized system.
Each new attack forces Russian companies to consider that the deep rear is no longer guaranteed to be safe.
Each delayed batch of electronics, communication means, or dual-use components potentially complicates the work of Russian manufacturers and units dependent on fast commercial supplies.
And every entrepreneur who lost products in a warehouse faces the real cost of war, which the Russian leadership has tried for years to hide from the population behind the formulation of a “special military operation.”
NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency emphasizes: Russia itself has turned its own economy, industry, and logistics into elements of a protracted war against Ukraine. Without the invasion, the killing of civilians, and the systematic destruction of Ukrainian cities, there would be no Ukrainian campaign of strikes on facilities deep within Russian territory.
Wildberries became a target not because it is a popular online store. It became vulnerable because in modern Russia, the largest civilian trade network simultaneously became a channel for the movement of goods, money, electronics, and equipment, some of which support the state’s ability to continue the war.
That is why burning Wildberries warehouses are not just lost parcels. They are evidence that the distance from the Ukrainian border no longer guarantees Russia economic, logistical, or psychological security.