{"id":20400,"date":"2026-07-24T06:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T06:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/20400\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T06:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T06:12:09","slug":"ukraine-drone-attack-sparks-fire-at-russian-e-commerce-giants-warehouse-near-saint-petersburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/20400\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine drone attack sparks fire at Russian e-commerce giant’s warehouse near Saint Petersburg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukrainian drones<\/a> hit a warehouse for a Russian e-commerce<\/a> giant near Saint Petersburg early Friday, triggering a fire that sent smoke pouring over the historic city, local officials said.<\/p>\n

Kyiv has targeted Saint Petersburg as it steps up long-range drone strikes<\/a> on Russian energy, military and logistics sites in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

An AFP reporter saw grey smoke rising into the morning sky over high-rise buildings in the city, which is more than 800 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.<\/p>\n

The local governor reported that a warehouse for Wildberries\u00a0\u2013 Russia<\/a>‘s largest online retailer often referred to as “Russia’s Amazon”\u00a0\u2013 was on fire after the strike.<\/p>\n

“Three people were wounded,” Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the surrounding Leningrad region said on social media.<\/p>\n

\"Remains<\/p>\n

Remains of the Wildberries warehouse that was burned down by a recent Ukrainian drone attack in the city of Elektrostal in the Moscow region, Russia July 23, 2026. \u00a9 Reuters <\/p>\n

Ukraine has carried out attacks on five Wildberries warehouses since July 18, accounting for about 10 percent of the company’s logistics \u200ccapacity.<\/p>\n

One of the company’s logistics hubs outside Moscow was hit last weekend<\/a>, killing eight night-shift workers and burning the facility to the ground.<\/p>\n

Together with smaller rivals, Wildberries and top competitor Ozon sell goods and services \u2060worth the equivalent of 8.5 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product and \u2060employ \u200b4 million people, or more than 5 percent of the country’s workforce.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a> alleged after the first attack that the facilities were used to “supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment”.<\/p>\n

Russia denied that \u200bthe company, which is at the centre of the country’s consumer economy, handles any military supplies.<\/p>\n

Kyiv calls its campaign “long-range sanctions<\/a>“, saying the attacks are justified retribution for Russia’s nightly drone and missile barrages of its cities.<\/p>\n

Ukraine strikes on oil refineries and other energy infrastructure has triggered nationwide fuel shortages and, Kyiv says, dented Russia’s financial war chest.<\/p>\n

‘Escalation’ <\/p>\n

Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport suspended flights during the attack, resuming operations around 6am (0300 GMT), with around 50 departures disrupted.<\/p>\n

Wildberries said two of its warehouses in the city had temporarily halted operations, without giving more details.<\/p>\n

Leningrad Governor Drozdenko said 59 Ukrainian drones had been shot down.<\/p>\n

Russian officials rarely concede that Ukrainian drones hit their targets, typically detailing only the number intercepted or attributing fires to falling debris.<\/p>\n

Moscow said on Friday it shot down 571 Ukrainian drones overnight, one of the largest swarms sent by Kyiv to date.<\/p>\n

The drones targeted more than a dozen Russian regions and annexed Crimea<\/a>, the defence ministry said, including the region around the second city of Saint Petersburg.<\/p>\n

Both Russia and Ukraine have escalated their long-range strikes in recent months.<\/p>\n

Moscow’s forces have fired increasing numbers of ballistic missiles at Kyiv\u00a0\u2013 killing dozens and ripping open apartment blocks.<\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump<\/a> has appeared to give his backing to Ukraine’s counter-attacks on Russia\u00a0\u2013 calling the strikes “an escalation that can lead to an end”.<\/p>\n

The United Nations has reported a surge in civilian deaths in 2026<\/a>, saying June was the deadliest month since mid-2022.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousand of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale offensive in February 2022\u00a0\u2013 though there is no precise toll with neither side routinely revealing the number of their losses.<\/p>\n

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukrainian drones hit a warehouse for a Russian e-commerce giant near Saint Petersburg early Friday, triggering a fire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[237,7714,30,25,26],"class_list":["post-20400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-drones","tag-e-commerce","tag-europe","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}