Ukraine has hit Russia's biggest marketplace in cyberspace as well as with drones. Cyber specialists disrupted Wildberries' operations across Russia, Ukraine's Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) reports.

Ukraine says that Wildberries is not ordinary commerce but a piece of Russia's war logistics. According to the military command, the network moves military-related goods, and President Zelenskyy has said Russia uses the platform to bring in sanctioned drone components, which is why Ukraine has spent weeks burning its warehouses and now strikes its servers.

HUR reports that on 10 and 11 August, specialists from the Cyber Corps community attacked Wildberries' digital infrastructure, causing failures in its payment and customer service systems.

The attack hit payments and support

The disruption struck where customers feel it. Because of the problems with the payment infrastructure, users complained they could not complete certain transactions.

For a platform whose whole value is the frictionless movement of goods and money, a payment system that will not process transactions is a direct hit to the business.

The strain spread to customer service. At the same time, the load on the support service rose, causing failures in the contact centers, so the attack degraded both the ability to pay and the ability to get help across Russia.

It pairs with the warehouse strikes

In July, Ukrainian drones destroyed eight Wildberries warehouses, about 15.4% of the marketplace's storage.

Pairing strikes on physical infrastructure with Ukrainian cyber operations strengthens the pressure on the company, HUR assessed.

The logic is to squeeze the same target from two directions at once: burn the warehouses that store the goods, then disable the systems that move them to customers, so damage in one domain amplifies damage in the other.

Earlier, Ukraine hit the Progress Rocket Space Center in Samara, which builds Soyuz-2 rockets used to launch Rassvet, Russia’s planned alternative to Starlink.

Ukrainian drones set fire to one of the largest warehouses of Russia's biggest online retailer on the morning of 3 August, according to the Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+ and local authorities. The strike hit a Wildberries logistics hub in Russia's Vladimir Oblast, hundreds of kilometers from Ukraine, and touched off a fire that Russian officials and the company confirmed. 

Ukrainian drones burned a hub built to hold 120 million items

Ukrainian FP-1 attack drones struck the Wildberries logistics center in the village of Khryastovo, in Vladimir Oblast's Sobinsky district, on the morning of 3 August. Exilenova+ began reporting an ongoing attack around 07:00 local time, then geolocated videos and photos of the fire. The site sits about 580 kilometers from Ukraine's border.

The complex is one of Wildberries' largest. It spans 171,900 square meters and moves goods between the Moscow region and central, northwestern, and northern parts of European Russia. Built for more than 120 million items, it was meant to reach roughly 175,000 square meters at full capacity.

Footage captured the moment an FP-1 drone slammed into the warehouse. The smoke rose over the site and was visible for tens of kilometers. The Ukrainian firm Fire Point, which makes the FP-1 long-range strike drone, said Ukraine's Defense Forces hit the hub with its drones. Vladimir Oblast Governor Alexander Avdeyev confirmed the strike.

Wildberries also confirmed a fire at the logistics center and said it had moved order intake and shipping to other sites. The Russian news Telegram channel Astra reported that one of Wildberries' largest warehouses in Vladimir Oblast halted operations after the attack and fire.

The strike extends a campaign against Russia's Amazon clone

Ukraine has spent two weeks burning the warehouses of Wildberries, Russia's biggest online retailer and its answer to Amazon. The campaign began on 18 July with strikes on hubs in Elektrostal near Moscow and Kotovsk in Tambov Oblast.

The day before the Khryastovo strike, on 2 August, Ukrainian drones hit another Wildberries hub in Samara Oblast. Ukrainian drones destroyed eight of the retailer's warehouses in July, about 15.4% of its storage, and later raids hit sites in Volgograd and Tatarstan.