MOSCOW: Kyiv’s drones hit warehouses of Russia’s biggest online retailer for the second time in a week on Wednesday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accusing the e-commerce giant of helping supply the Russian army.
The strikes hit Wildberries sites in southern Russia, just four days after Ukrainian drones sparked massive fires and killed eight people at the company’s site outside Moscow. Wildberries is the country’s top online retailer, often called Russia’s equivalent to Amazon.
The governor of the southern Krasnodar region, Vladimir Kondratyev, said one person was killed in Wednesday’s strikes, but it was unclear if it was at a Wildberries warehouse or elsewhere.
Kyiv has intensified its retaliatory strikes on Russia in recent months. Wildberries CEO Tatiana Kim said the company’s logistic centres in the southern cities of Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk were attacked and evacuated.
“There are no words that can describe the feelings and emotions because of attacks on ordinary people, our employees,” she said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had struck “logistics hubs involved in supplying the Russian army with drone components, navigation equipment and other gear.” Zelensky had previously said the company had been storing drone components.
He also said Kyiv had struck an oil depot as well as a “tanker and four cargo ships” in the Black and Azov seas, where Ukraine has in recent days intensified attacks.
Ukraine has disrupted Russian shipping in the Azov Sea, forcing Moscow to consider alternative shipping routes. Ukrainian drones have hit as far as the Urals and Siberia and caused nationwide fuel shortages.
“We are, quite justly, bringing the war back home,” Zelensky said. Ukraine has said that its strikes aim to damage Russia’s war effort as well as to force the Kremlin to negotiate an end to more than four years of conflict.
The UN on Tuesday said that civilian casualties in the war rose 37 per cent in the first half of 2026.
Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2026
