Between July 18 and July 22, 2026, Ukrainian drones hit four warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia's largest online shopping platform. Think of Wildberries as Russia's version of Amazon. The strikes killed at least eight workers, injured dozens, and may have cost the independent sellers who use the platform at least 150 billion rubles in losses (Reuters, Meduza).

The first wave came on the night of July 18. Drones struck Wildberries warehouses in Kotovsk and Elektrostal. Governor Evgeny Pervyshov reported the Kotovsk strike and confirmed 25 injuries in his region (Reuters). Twenty-four people were inside the Elektrostal facility at the time (The Moscow Times). Initial reports said seven workers were killed, but Reuters later updated the count to eight on July 21 (Reuters).

The drones used at Kotovsk were equipped with fragmentation elements — parts designed to scatter shrapnel and cause more injuries to people nearby, according to TASS (TASS). Families of those killed were offered 2 million rubles in compensation (Lenta.ru). The Russian prosecutor's office is monitoring the rights of those affected by the Elektrostal strike (TASS).

A second wave came on the night of July 22, hitting warehouses in Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk. One person was killed and ten injured. These strikes were part of a larger drone attack involving 242 drones (TASS). The Guardian reported that on July 21, Ukraine launched more than 400 drones toward Moscow as part of the wider campaign (The Guardian). Reuters confirmed on July 22 that four Wildberries warehouses had been attacked over the week (Reuters).

TASS, a Russian state news agency, reported that the strikes may amount to a war crime under international law (TASS). This fits Moscow's pattern of bringing strikes on civilian buildings to the attention of international bodies. The key legal question is whether the warehouses count as valid military targets. Under international humanitarian law — the rules that govern what can be attacked in war — a target must serve a military purpose, and any harm to civilians must not be excessive compared to the military advantage gained.

The financial impact is large. The July 22 strikes alone may have cost sellers at least 150 billion rubles (Meduza). Wildberries works like a marketplace: independent sellers store their goods in company-run warehouses. So when those warehouses were destroyed, it was the sellers — many of them small businesses — who lost their inventory. Sales were frozen after the July 18 strikes, leaving sellers to count losses from both destroyed goods and halted operations (InKazan).

The pattern of the attacks — two waves, four sites, spread across different regions — suggests they were planned rather than random. The sites range from Tambov in central Russia to Krasnodar in the south, covering a wide stretch of the country's delivery network. The use of shrapnel-producing drones at Kotovsk, if confirmed, suggests the goal included harming people, not just buildings. These warehouses run around the clock during busy periods.

The broader context here is a shift in Ukraine's drone strategy. Earlier in the war, Ukraine's long-range drone attacks focused on military sites and energy infrastructure. Wildberries warehouses are civilian facilities. Whether they also serve a military purpose — enough to make them legal targets — is the question TASS raised, and one that international legal experts will likely examine. The logic behind the strikes, however, is straightforward: damaging a platform that handles a large share of Russian everyday shopping spreads economic pain through the civilian economy. That is something energy strikes, which Russia has partly adjusted to, may no longer achieve as effectively.