Ukrainian drones strike Wildberries hub and Bashkortostan oil refinery

In a significant escalation of Ukraine’s cross-border drone campaign, a wave of aerial attacks targeted a logistics hub owned by Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, and caused a fire at one of the country’s most significant oil refineries in the republic of Bashkortostan, according to regional officials and exiled news outlets. Radiy Khabirov, the regional head, reported that 16 drones were shot down over the city of Salavat and five others over the neighbouring Chishminsky district, located approximately 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) east of Moscow and more than 1,300 kilometres (808 miles) from the Ukrainian border, underscoring the extended reach of Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles. Khabirov confirmed that two people had been injured in the attacks and were receiving medical care, while falling debris from the intercepted drones sparked a fire in what he described as an “industrial area,” later identified by the exiled media outlet Astra as the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat refinery, which accounts for 2.7 per cent of Russia’s total refining throughput and had already halted operations following damage sustained in an attack last month.

Wildberries confirmed that a fire had broken out at another “industrial zone” housing one of its facilities, noting that staff had been evacuated in advance and that no retail merchandise was being stored at the site, while Khabirov said a Ka-32 firefighting helicopter had been deployed to assist ground crews in extinguishing the blaze in the Chishminsky district where the logistics hub is situated. Astra reported that construction of the complex, which totals 186,800 square metres, was not yet complete, adding to the significance of the damage. Russia’s Defence Ministry, in a separate statement, said its air defence systems had intercepted 362 Ukrainian drones across 18 Russian regions and annexed Crimea between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, a figure that attests to the scale of the Ukrainian operation. The drone barrage also caused temporary flight suspensions and restrictions at regional airports in the southern cities of Ufa, Kazan, Samara and Krasnodar, further disrupting civilian life and underscoring the growing vulnerability of Russian infrastructure to Ukrainian long-range strikes.