Overnight, Ukraine sent drones to attack warehouse complexes across Russia. Five people were killed and 10 were injured in the Moscow area. Other drones hit facilities in the Tver region and near St. Petersburg, according to regional Governor Andrei Vorobyov (Al Jazeera, 2026-08-04). The Moscow-area warehouse was one of three warehouse attacks Ukraine carried out across Russia that night.

One of the warehouses belonged to Wildberries, a large Russian online shopping company. It was hit in the Tver region, northwest of Moscow. Wildberries also confirmed a fire at another of its warehouses near St. Petersburg after a separate attack. Ukraine says Wildberries helps Russia's war effort by supplying items that can be used both by ordinary customers and by the military — these are called dual-use goods. After the attacks, Wildberries banned employees from bringing smartphones to work on Monday, to stop them from sharing photos that Ukrainian intelligence could study.

Ukraine's attacks went beyond warehouses. A drone struck the Syzran Oil Refinery in Russia's Samara region, starting a fire. On Monday, seven people were killed and about 40 were injured when a Ukrainian drone hit a beach in southern Russia, near the city of Gelendzhik. Reports say the drone was intercepted — meaning a defense system tried to shoot it down — and it crashed onto the beach. Ukraine has not commented on the beach strike but has said many times that it does not aim at civilians.

The Black Sea also saw violence. Three people were badly hurt when a drone hit a Turkish cargo ship in the Russian port of Novorossiysk, according to Turkiye's maritime authority. All 22 crew members were evacuated. Turkiye, which is a member of NATO (a military alliance of Western countries), called on both Russia and Ukraine to keep the Black Sea safe for ships and expressed serious concern about civilians being harmed.

Russia kept up its own attacks on Ukrainian cities. At least three people, including two children, were killed in Russian strikes on the northern city of Sumy. An elderly woman was killed in an overnight attack on the southern port city of Mykolaiv. Russia's state-run news agency RIA said Russian forces struck seven cargo ships in Mykolaiv's port. In Crimea, a peninsula that Russia took from Ukraine in 2014, a soldier was arrested after reportedly killing a fellow soldier and three civilians, according to Moscow-installed Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev.

These attacks follow a sharp rise in long-range strikes. On August 1, Russia attacked Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, with ballistic missiles (fast, powerful missiles that travel in a high arc) and drones, killing at least nine people and wounding more than 30, according to the LA Times (LA Times, 2026-08-01). Before that, Russia attacked the city of Poltava, where President Zelenskyy received early reports of 41 dead and more than 180 injured (President of Ukraine, 2024-09-03).

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that he wants to pressure Vladimir Putin to end the war before winter. Ukraine has previously placed sanctions — penalties meant to cut people off from money and resources — on Russian individuals connected to missile strikes on key infrastructure. In May 2025, Ukraine targeted 127 Russian individuals in one such package (President of Ukraine, 2026-05-23). Nearly 124,000 Ukrainians have received awards for their service defending the country (President of Ukraine, 2025-10-01).

The bigger picture is that both Russia and Ukraine are sending drones and missiles deep behind enemy lines to hit things like warehouses, oil refineries, and ports — places that keep supplies and money flowing. Think of it like cutting off the roads and storerooms that feed a war effort. Civilians on both sides are being hurt and killed in the process. Ukraine seems to be trying to damage Russia's supply chains and economy. Russia keeps hitting Ukraine's ports and cities.

The Wildberries story adds another layer. If Ukraine is right that the company supplies items the military can use, then the warehouse strikes are not random — they are aimed at businesses Ukraine sees as part of Russia's war machine. The fact that Wildberries banned smartphones suggests the company knows Ukraine is watching. For anyone tracking this conflict, that points to Ukrainian intelligence carefully studying Russia's commercial networks, and Russian companies starting to fight back with their own security measures.