Ukrainian long-range drones destroyed two massive warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, overnight into Saturday, July 18, 2026, killing at least eight people and wounding more than 60 in what regional officials describe as the deadliest Ukrainian strikes inside Russia in over two years. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the facilities were used to supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment, a supply chain DroneXL has been documenting since 2025.
One warehouse burned in Kotovsk, in the Tambov region, roughly 360 km (220 miles) from the Ukrainian border. The second, the company’s largest logistics center at more than 360,000 square meters (3.9 million square feet), went up in Elektrostal, about 50 km (30 miles) east of Moscow. Smoke from the Elektrostal fire was visible from inside Moscow’s city limits.
Eight Dead and Dozens Wounded Across Two Regions
Seven night-shift workers died at the Kotovsk fulfillment center and 25 were wounded, according to Tambov regional governor Yevgeny Pervyshov, who claimed the drones carried warheads designed to maximize casualties. In the Moscow region, governor Andrei Vorobyov initially reported 37 wounded, one of whom later died in the hospital. His office later raised the regional tally to 61 injured, 57 of them in Elektrostal, according to the Kyiv Independent. Drone debris also struck a kindergarten building in Elektrostal, sparking a fire that was later extinguished.
Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin claimed more than 370 Ukrainian drones were launched toward the Moscow region, with 64 shot down on approach to the capital. A separate drone hit an oil depot in Noginsk, just north of Elektrostal, forcing the evacuation of a nearby maternity hospital and a residential building. Ukraine’s general staff also reported strikes on tankers, floating cranes, and a Project 10410 Svetlyak-class patrol boat in Kerch, plus a railway bridge in occupied Luhansk used for military logistics.
The strikes were not isolated. They fit the deep-strike campaign Ukraine has built since Operation Spiderweb destroyed over 40 Russian warplanes in June 2025, and since Kyiv fielded systems like the Sichen strike drone with its 1,400 km (870-mile) range.
Zelenskyy Ties Russia’s Largest Retailer to the Military Supply Chain
Zelenskyy framed the Wildberries facilities as military logistics nodes. “These are Russian logistics facilities, specifically warehouses used to supply war materiel: navigation equipment, components for drone production, and other supplies for the Russian army,” he said in a video address, as reported by the Kyiv Independent. He called the operation retaliation for Russian strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, hours before Russian missiles hit Kyiv early Sunday, killing at least one person.
Serhii Kuzan, a Ukrainian military analyst who has publicly championed Kyiv’s deep-strike campaign, told the BBC that Wildberries supplies the Russian army with dual-use and sanctioned goods and electronics. Independent Russian outlet Meduza reported that the platform openly sells body armor, combat helmets, camouflage uniforms, and fiber-optic cable for drones. DroneXL has tracked this component pipeline for years, from Chinese engine makers shipping drone powerplants labeled as refrigeration units to evade export controls, to a Shenzhen parts supplier taking a 5 percent stake in Rustakt, a sanctioned Russian FPV drone manufacturer.
Wildberries is not a neutral bystander in the Russian economy either. Founder Tatyana Kim’s 2024 merger with advertising firm Russ won backing from Vladimir Putin, who saw it as the foundation of a Russian rival to Amazon and Alibaba.
Damage Estimates Reach 100 Billion Rubles
Preliminary estimates put the damage above 50 billion rubles, with up to 15 percent of Wildberries’ total warehouse space affected, according to Meduza. Investigative outlet IStories, cited by the Kyiv Independent, estimated losses could exceed 100 billion rubles, around $1.2 billion. Ukraine’s military said a 188,000-square-meter (2 million-square-foot) Wildberries warehouse burned so intensely that black smoke was visible for kilometers.
The financial pain will not stay with the company. Meduza reports that Wildberries’ seller contracts contain a clause shifting losses onto the small vendors whose goods burned, meaning thousands of Russian merchants may never see compensation.
DroneXL’s Take
The claim that matters here is Zelenskyy’s: that an e-commerce warehouse was a military supply node. It deserves scrutiny, and the open-source record leans his way. Wildberries openly lists fiber-optic drone cable, body armor, and combat gear. That proves the company sells war materiel. It does not prove these two specific buildings stored drone components on Friday night, and honest analysis keeps that distinction visible. And we have spent two years tracing how sanctioned drone components reach Russia through exactly this kind of commercial camouflage, from engines invoiced as refrigerators to Chinese experts embedded in sanctioned Russian arms plants. When a country routes its war logistics through consumer fulfillment centers, it erases the line between retail and materiel, and it puts night-shift pickers and packers where ammunition handlers should be. That moral weight sits on Moscow’s choice of supply chain as much as on Kyiv’s choice of target.
Zelenskyy’s statement is a claim from a combatant, and eight warehouse workers are dead. Watch whether open-source investigators can document military-bound inventory in the wreckage the way they documented Chinese components in downed Garpiya drones. If they can, this strike becomes the template for how Ukraine treats every “civilian” logistics hub feeding Russia’s Shahed and FPV production lines.
Sources: The Guardian, CNN, Kyiv Independent, Meduza
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
