A Ukrainian drone attack overnight on Aug. 10-11 hit logistics facilities belonging to Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries in the Voronezh region, triggering fires across tens of thousands of square meters, according to Russian officials and the company.
Voronezh Oblast Governor Alexander Gusev said around 15 drones targeted the city of Voronezh and nearby districts. The attack killed one person and injured two others, who were hospitalized, he claimed.
“Fires broke out at two warehouses belonging to a major company,” Gusev wrote on Telegram. He said one fire spread across 16,000 square meters, while another affected 20,000 square meters and remained under firefighting operations.
Drone debris also damaged several vehicles, including three trucks and one passenger car, according to the governor.
Wildberries confirmed that its logistics infrastructure was hit, saying employees were evacuated “in accordance with safety requirements.”
The targeted facility is a major Wildberries distribution hub in the village of Aleksandrovka in Voronezh Oblast’s Novousmansky District. The warehouse complex covers 152,900 square meters (38 acres) and can store more than 90 million products.
The facility, fully opened in November 2025, was built at a cost of around 11 billion rubles ($120 million) by Wildberries & Russ, the merged company behind Russia’s largest online marketplace.
Ukraine targets Russia’s logistics backbone
The strike marks the latest in a series of Ukrainian attacks targeting Wildberries’ logistics network, which Kyiv has increasingly hit as part of a broader campaign against Russia’s military-linked economic infrastructure.
Since July 18, Ukrainian forces have struck around 20 Wildberries logistics centers across Russia, according to Russian media outlet Verstka. The affected facilities include warehouses in Elektrostal, Krasnodar, Nevinnomyssk, Yekaterinburg, St. Petersburg, and other locations.
At least 14 warehouses have reportedly burned, with the total damaged storage area exceeding 1.5 million square meters – about 27% of Wildberries’ entire warehouse capacity.
The attacks have inflicted heavy financial losses on the company and its sellers. Market sources cited by The Bell estimated Wildberries’ direct losses at between 100 billion and 200 billion rubles ($1.1 billion-$2.2 billion), while the company may require up to 1.3 trillion rubles ($14.4 billion) in additional funding.
The strikes have left thousands of independent sellers struggling to recover losses from inventory destroyed in warehouse fires.
According to Reuters, hundreds of billions of rubles are needed to compensate Wildberries sellers for destroyed goods, but the Russian state lacks the funds to cover the losses.
“No one has that kind of money to support the sellers. We are talking about hundreds of billions of rubles,” a Kremlin source told Reuters.
The situation is particularly severe for individual entrepreneurs, who make up a significant share of Wildberries vendors. Under Russian law, they are personally liable for their business debts.
Sellers who purchased inventory on credit now face not only business collapse but also the potential seizure of personal assets if they cannot repay loans.
The Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has reportedly proposed changing bankruptcy procedures to protect entrepreneurs affected by the warehouse destruction.
The marketplace has begun compensating affected sellers, but payments remain limited, with many reportedly receiving less than 10% of the value of goods destroyed or damaged in warehouse fires.