Russian officials said Ukraine drones struck three warehouse sites overnight into Tuesday, August 4, killing five people and injuring ten at an industrial zone south of Moscow, Reuters reported. Two other attacks damaged facilities operated by Wildberries, extending a campaign that has hit more than a dozen of the retailer’s locations since July 18.
The deaths occurred in the Novoselki industrial zone in the Chekhov municipal district, according to Moscow regional Governor Andrei Vorobyov. Several fires broke out at the site after drones reached the area. The warehouse operator was not disclosed.
Ukraine’s expanding long-range drone campaign is forcing Russia’s largest online retailer to redesign its distribution network, moving the operational cost of the war beyond military bases and oil facilities and into the infrastructure that connects merchants with consumers.
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Meanwhile, a separate fire broke out at a Wildberries warehouse in the Leningrad region, adjacent to St. Petersburg. Wildberries said there were no casualties. In the Tver region, acting Governor Vitaly Korolyov said drone debris partially damaged a wall at another Wildberries facility in the village of Emmaus. No injuries were reported there.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air-defence systems destroyed 320 Ukrainian drones across 19 regions during the overnight barrage.
Ukraine had not publicly claimed responsibility for the three warehouse attacks.
The August 4 attacks followed a major fire one day earlier at a Wildberries facility in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow, Reuters reported. Regional authorities deployed 203 firefighters and 67 pieces of equipment against a blaze covering approximately 100,000 square metres, or about 1.07 million square feet.
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Wildberries said employees were evacuated and deliveries were transferred to other warehouses. Three people sustained injuries described by local authorities as non-life-threatening.
The company’s ability to reroute inventory has limited immediate disruption, but the cumulative damage is widening. Open-source analysis by Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, cited by Reuters on July 23, estimated that earlier attacks had affected approximately 552,000 square metres of warehouse space, equivalent to about 10% of Wildberries’ logistics capacity.
The attacks have exposed how much Russia’s consumer economy depends on a concentrated network of enormous fulfilment centres. Reuters reported that Wildberries, Ozon, and smaller online marketplaces process goods and services with a value equivalent to 8.5% of Russian gross domestic product and employ approximately 4 million people.
Ukraine has previously said Wildberries facilities support the Russian military, including by distributing goods with potential military applications. The Kremlin denies the company handles military supplies.
Wildberries founder and CEO Tatyana Kim has called the attacks “acts of terrorism,” Reuters reported. She said businesses in ten countries had suffered losses and that the company was restructuring its logistics network to maintain delivery times and inventory turnover.
Kim acknowledged that dual-use products were sold through the platform but argued that comparable goods were also available through international marketplaces such as Amazon and Alibaba Group Holding.
