Ukraine's drone campaign

Where things stand

Ukraine's long-range drone campaign against Russian rear-area logistics has widened north and, overnight into July 24, became simultaneous rather than sequential. Drones struck warehouse complexes of Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, near St Petersburg, elsewhere in the Leningrad region and in occupied Simferopol — the fourth such attack in a week and the first to reach either the St Petersburg area or Crimea, after earlier strikes on the Moscow, Tambov and Voronezh regions and on Krasnodar and Stavropol Krai since July 18. The same night saw a separate strike on the Avitek plant in Kirov, a declared military production site, which the regional governor said killed six people and injured 26. Russia's Defence Ministry said it downed 571 drones over 15 regions, which would make the operation one of the largest Ukrainian long-range attacks of the year; that figure comes from the Russian side and is not independently confirmed.

Wildberries is Russia's largest online retailer and runs a network of large regional warehouse and sorting hubs that underpin domestic distribution. Since mid-July 2026, Ukrainian long-range drones have repeatedly targeted those hubs alongside industrial sites deeper inside Russia, extending a strike campaign well beyond the front line. Casualty figures and damage assessments in these attacks are typically reported by Russian regional governors and the Defence Ministry, and are generally not verifiable from independent sources. The practical effect on the ground has varied by site: the Voronezh facility resumed operations within half a day and Kotovsk restarted on a limited basis from July 23, while Elektrostal and Nevinnomyssk remain closed. The July 24 wave marked the campaign's second mass-casualty toll, after Kotovsk and Elektrostal.