KOTOVSK, Russia — Seven workers were killed and 24 others injured when Ukrainian drones struck a Wildberries logistics center in Kotovsk overnight Saturday, hitting one of Russia’s best-known commercial companies in a city 480 kilometers from Moscow and killing people whose night shift had just begun.
Tambov Region governor Evgeny Pervyshov confirmed the strike in a pre-dawn post on Max. “As a result of enemy drones hitting the Wildberries logistics center, seven night shift employees were killed,” Pervyshov wrote. “According to preliminary reports, 24 people were injured.” The fire at the warehouse had been extinguished, with firefighting efforts continuing. Ambulances, fire crews, the emergencies ministry, and law enforcement all responded, he said. All victims were receiving medical assistance.
Wildberries is Russia’s largest e-commerce marketplace. Its logistics network of warehouses and sorting centers employs hundreds of thousands of workers across the country. The Kotovsk center is one of dozens of regional hubs that process and redistribute goods ordered by Russian consumers. Pervyshov’s statement made no reference to any military or dual-use function at the warehouse. Ukraine did not immediately claim responsibility for the strike.
Kotovsk lies roughly 300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Saturday’s strike fits a pattern of increasingly long-range Ukrainian drone operations that have moved from front-adjacent military targets to industrial and commercial-logistics infrastructure deeper inside Russia. The night before, Ukrainian drones struck the Slavneft-Yanos oil refinery in Yaroslavl Oblast and disabled 12 shadow fleet vessels in the Black Sea.
Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Security Service said FPV drones struck a Tu-95MS strategic bomber at Russia’s Engels air base in an operation that severed the aircraft’s tail section 800 kilometers inside Russian territory. The Wildberries strike represents a different kind of target: a civilian commerce company whose warehouses process consumer orders for Russian households.
Whether the warehouse’s proximity to any military logistics chains factored into the targeting, or whether it was struck as part of a broader effort to erode home-front economic activity, is not known. Kyiv’s stated doctrine of deep strikes on Russian territory, articulated repeatedly by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, centers on raising the cost of the war inside Russia. That doctrine has so far been applied primarily to energy infrastructure, military production, and air bases.
Pervyshov’s statement attributed the attack to “the Ukrainian neo-fascist regime” and described it as a “terrorist attack,” standard official Russian framing for strikes inside Russian territory. Ukraine considers long-range operations against Russian infrastructure part of its legitimate military campaign. Seven warehouse workers on an overnight shift are the most concrete fact both framings share.
Russia’s air defense network in Tambov Region produced no intercepted drone reports. How the drones reached their target, how many were used, and what flight corridor they followed has not been established. Monitoring channels documented air defense activity over Tambov itself but no interception. That gap remains unanswered.
