Ukrainian long-range drones struck warehouses of Russia's biggest online retailer overnight and into the morning of 24 July, hitting occupied Crimea and Russia's second-largest city, according to Ukrainian and Russian monitoring channels. Fires broke out at Wildberries logistics sites, and the company suspended operations near St. Petersburg while evacuating its sorting center in occupied Simferopol. Another—less successful—strike occured in Tver. Russia scrambled fighter jets and claimed dozens of drones downed, but the warehouses burned.
Fires from occupied Crimea to the Baltic coast
The night's strikes began over occupied Simferopol. The monitoring Telegram channel Krymsky Veter logged explosions from 23:55, pointing to a likely hit on a thermal power plant and a Wildberries warehouse, and later noted a fire at a substation in the Feodosia district. Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ also reported the Simferopol strike, while the Astra Telegram channel said the sorting center there was attacked overnight.
Wildberries confirmed it, saying it evacuated staff from the Simferopol center at 01:40 "in line with safety requirements." Founder Tatyana Kim later confirmed the warehouse had been hit.
By morning, the drones struck the St. Petersburg area. Videos published by Exilenova+ and reports cited by Astra documented two logistics centers on fire — one at Shushary in the city's Pushkinsky district, a roughly 106,000-square-meter complex among the retailer's largest in northwest Russia, and one at Utkina Zavod in the village of Novosaratovka, just across the city's administrative line.
Astra reported the Novosaratovka blaze. Wildberries said it had temporarily halted work at both. Ukraine's Defense Forces used long-range FP-1 drones made by Fire Point.
Ukraine's drone-force commander Robert Brovdi, call sign "Madyar," wrote on Facebook:
"Today from Simferopol to Piter" — Piter being the Russian nickname for St. Petersburg.
Leningrad Oblast Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko claimed air defenses shot down 59 drones. He also confirmed a hit on the Novosaratovka Wildberries warehouse that injured three people, and said drones struck a storage building at the "Severnaya" poultry farm in Sinyavino, collapsing part of one structure. St. Petersburg Governor Aleksandr Beglov acknowledged a drone hitting a "civilian infrastructure object."
A fire also broke out at a logistics-center administrative building in Tver after a drone attack, which the acting regional governor said was already put out—one version held it was also a Wildberries warehouse.
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Another week of strikes on the retailer
The day before, Ukrainian drones hit a Wildberries distribution center in Voronezh Oblast, where the governor acknowledged roof damage, and tried to reach a warehouse in Kazan, where locals said air defenses downed them.
Over the past week, Ukrainian drones struck about 10% of Wildberries' logistics network and knocked out 8% of its warehouses, Russian business daily Kommersant calculated from open data. Rebuilding the lost storage space alone, without equipment, was estimated at about $450 million, and company sources warned some sites may need full reconstruction.
