Ukraine's Drone War Reaches Russia's Largest Online Retailer, Killing Nine

Ukrainian drone strikes have hit Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, killing nine people and leaving small sellers with losses of millions of roubles, according to the Financial Times. The attacks extend a campaign that had focused on refineries and supply lines to the commercial logistics that move goods across the country. Overnight on July 24, a fresh and larger wave struck Wildberries warehouses in St. Petersburg, the surrounding Leningrad region and Crimea, killing at least six more people and setting off fires at several sites, The Moscow Times reported. Russian and Ukrainian accounts described it as one of the largest Ukrainian strikes of the year, with the same barrage also hitting a missile plant.

President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the latest strikes and accused Wildberries of helping supply the Russian military with parts for drones and other equipment, a claim that frames the company as a military target rather than a purely civilian one. The targeting of a major civilian retailer marks a shift in the economic front of the war. Where earlier strikes aimed at oil revenue and military supply, hitting distribution warehouses raises costs and uncertainty for the merchants and consumers who depend on them.

Russia has continued its own strikes against Ukraine's power grid, and each side describes the other's attacks on infrastructure as illegitimate. The Wildberries strikes show how the conflict is steadily drawing in more of the civilian economy on both sides.