Wildberries warehouse struck again as drone campaign intensifies

At least 11 people have been killed in Ukrainian drone strikes across southern Russia and annexed Crimea, local authorities said on Monday, as the online retailer Wildberries confirmed that yet another of its warehouses had been targeted in central Russia. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed head of Crimea, reported that four people had been killed and two others wounded in an overnight attack, though he did not specify the location of the strike. In the southern Krasnodar region, authorities said falling drone debris killed seven people, including three children, in the Black Sea resort town of Arkhipo-Osipovka early on Monday, with a further 40 people injured. A video shared on social media appeared to capture the moment the drone crashed on a crowded beach; gunfire, likely from Russian air defence systems, could be heard before the unmanned aircraft plunged into the ground and exploded in a fireball.

In the Vladimir region, located east of Moscow, Wildberries said it had evacuated employees from one of its warehouses after Ukrainian drones targeted the facility, with the company reporting that firefighters were battling a blaze that had broken out. Vladimir region Governor Alexander Avdeyev confirmed that three people had been injured in the attack. Videos and photographs shared on social media showed a large column of smoke rising above what was said to be the warehouse, with NASA satellite imagery later revealing that a black smoke cloud over the Vladimir region was visible from space on Monday afternoon. The attack on the Wildberries facility marked the latest in a series of strikes against the e-commerce giant's logistics hubs, which Ukraine has targeted almost daily since mid-July, accusing the company of supplying the Russian military with drone parts and other equipment.

Russia's Defence Ministry said it had intercepted 131 Ukrainian drones across Russia and annexed Crimea between Sunday night and Monday morning, though the scale of the attacks suggested that a significant number had evaded Russian air defences. The strikes have wiped out a substantial portion of Wildberries' storage capacity and cost third-party merchants hundreds of billions of roubles, according to Forbes Russia, as Ukraine's campaign against Russian logistics infrastructure continues to intensify. The attack on the Black Sea resort town, which appeared to target civilians at a popular beach destination, raised particular concern given the high number of casualties, including children, and the apparent failure of Russian air defences to prevent the drone from reaching its target.

The drone strikes came as Ukrainian authorities have accused Russia of continuing to target civilian infrastructure, with the conflict increasingly characterised by both sides striking economic and logistical targets far behind the front lines. Wildberries, one of Russia's largest online retailers, has seen its operations disrupted by the near-daily attacks, with the company now planning to build significant warehouse capacity in Kazakhstan to reduce its vulnerability to Ukrainian strikes. The Russian Defence Ministry's claim of intercepting 131 drones suggested a continued high volume of Ukrainian long-range attacks, though the number of successful strikes indicated that Ukraine's drone campaign was achieving significant penetration of Russian air defences. The deaths in the Krasnodar region and Crimea represented one of the highest civilian tolls from Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory in recent weeks, underscoring the expanding scope of the conflict and the increasing vulnerability of civilian areas to the growing drone threat.