Ukraine strikes Wildberries warehouse in Penza, 11th logistics hub hit in two weeks

Latest attack in Penza

Overnight on 30 July, Ukrainian drones struck a large Wildberries warehouse in Russia's Penza region, setting it ablaze. Penza governor Oleg Melnitschenko, cited by state agency Tass, said at least one person was injured and around 200 employees were evacuated. Videos on Telegram showed flames and thick black smoke rising from the site. A woman who works with Wildberries complained on her blog that the company demanded she unload her goods despite the fire, asking, "Where am I supposed to unload them – straight into the fire?" The attack is the 11th on a Wildberries logistics centre in less than two weeks, according to media reports.

Ryazan strike and refinery hit

The previous night, a mass drone attack targeted the city of Ryazan, hitting a Wildberries logistics hub and one of Russia's largest oil refineries. Governor Pavel Malkov confirmed that falling debris caused fires at industrial sites, injuring six people. He said 45 enemy drones were repelled over the Ryazan region. Russia's defence ministry reported that 295 Ukrainian combat drones were shot down across the country that night. Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 80 drones, of which 65 were intercepted, with impacts at ten locations.

Scale of the campaign

Since early July, Ukraine has systematically attacked Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer often compared to Amazon. The strikes have burned more than one million square metres of warehouse space, roughly 20 percent of the company's total storage area. Before the Ryazan attack, the independent business outlet The Bell estimated the value of destroyed warehouse facilities at 400 million euros, with stored goods worth nearly 1.7 billion euros. At least eight of the targeted centres have been partially or completely gutted. Wildberries had been expanding aggressively with loans, building warehouses, launching an online bank and a travel agency; the campaign now poses an existential threat to that growth.

Ukraine's justification and scepticism

Kyiv's military says Wildberries is a legitimate target because the platform sells military equipment, including FPV drones, fibre-optic control cables, armour plates and protective vests. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused the company of trading in materials used for the war that Russia launched in 2022. The Kremlin categorically denies the accusation. However, even observers sympathetic to Ukraine have questioned the reasoning. Journalist Vladislav Gorin, speaking on the exiled Russian outlet Meduza's podcast, argued that Wildberries is not a military target, comparing the logic to Moscow's bombing of Ukrainian power plants in winter on the grounds that they also supplied heat and electricity.

Strategic aims

Beyond the stated military rationale, analysts see a broader goal: to bring the war's disruption to Russia's urban middle class, which relies heavily on online shopping. The highly visible fires at vast logistics hubs have rattled consumers and disrupted supply chains. The parallel campaign against Russian refineries, ongoing for months, aims to squeeze fuel supplies and cut the oil-export revenues that finance the war. The Ryazan refinery, one of the country's largest, has been hit multiple times. The war, now nearly four and a half years old, has seen Ukraine increasingly use long-range drones to strike deep inside Russian territory.