Ukraine’s Drone Raid Torches Russia’s Wildberries Warehouses
Ukraine launched one of its largest drone assaults of the war against Russia overnight into August 16, and for the second time in weeks a major target wasn't a military base or an oil refinery — it was a warehouse chain. The strikes reignited fires at facilities belonging to Wildberries, Russia's dominant e-commerce retailer, deepening a monthslong campaign to treat the country's consumer logistics network as a legitimate wartime target.
Russia's Ministry of Defense said its air defenses shot down 822 Ukrainian drones overnight , with roughly 600 of those craft detected heading toward the Moscow region alone, according to Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin. Of that number, Sobyanin said 201 drones were intercepted over the Moscow region itself — what appeared to be the largest single wave of drone strikes against the Russian capital of the war to date. Russia's civil aviation regulator, Rosaviatsiya, imposed temporary flight restrictions at three of Moscow's four international airports — Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky — along with airports in Kaluga, Tambov, Gelendzhik and Sochi.
Separately, a barrage of more than 150 drones struck Russia's southwestern Rostov region, hitting three towns and nine districts, regional Gov. Yury Slyusar said. Ukraine's General Staff said the Rostov strikes targeted Kombinat Kamensky, a state-owned plant that produces solid rocket fuel for Uragan, Smerch and Tornado-S rocket systems — a reminder that even amid the retail-infrastructure headlines, Kyiv kept pressure on Russia's munitions-production base.
The most visible damage landed at Wildberries. A Ukrainian strike set fire to the company's 250,000-square-meter logistics hub in Koledino, near Podolsk south of Moscow — Wildberries' largest single facility by floor area — while a second complex, Severnoye Domodedovo, was also set ablaze. Moscow region Gov. Andrey Vorobyov confirmed the fire and said warehouse staff were evacuated without injury.
Ukraine's Defense Ministry said the Koledino strike meant Kyiv had now knocked seven of Wildberries' ten largest logistics hubs out of operation. "Russian logistics is acutely feeling the consequences of the war that the Russian Federation brought to Ukraine," the ministry said in a statement posted to its official channels. The Ukrainian missile and drone manufacturer Fire Point separately claimed credit for the Koledino strike in a Telegram post cited by the Associated Press.
Russian officials reported at least seven people killed in Sunday's barrage: one in Moscow region's Ramensky district when a drone struck a residential property, five in the Rostov region, and one in a drone strike on a bus in the Belgorod region. A separately reported figure of roughly 40 additional injuries could not be independently corroborated in the wire and regional-press reporting reviewed for this article, and casualty figures overall trace back to Russian regional officials and Ukrainian government statements that outlets including the Kyiv Independent explicitly flagged as "could not be independently verified". Ukraine reported its own overnight losses: Russian strikes killed at least two people in Kryvyi Rih, one in Sumy and two in Zaporizhzhia region, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, while six were wounded in Kyiv.
Russia has already begun adapting: state media reported the launch of a military-oriented online marketplace, "Roy.Market," aimed at insulating drone and defense-equipment sales from further Wildberries disruptions. Whether that effort blunts the economic impact of Ukraine's campaign remains unclear, but with three of Wildberries' ten largest hubs still standing, further strikes appear likely. Neither the Kremlin nor Wildberries has announced a broader response, and no ceasefire or de-escalation signal followed Sunday's attack.
