Ukrainian drones struck warehouses belonging to online retailer Wildberries for the third time in less than a week, co-founder Tatyana Kim confirmed Friday morning, while authorities reported that a separate attack in the Kirov region killed at least six people.
Kim, Russia’s wealthiest woman, said Wildberries facilities in St. Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad region, as well as in annexed Crimea, were hit overnight. Fires broke out at several locations, though Kim said “parts” of the warehouses were saved.
While Kim said none of the company’s employees were injured, Leningrad region Governor Alexander Drozdenko wrote in a post on Telegram earlier in the morning that three people were hurt during the attack in his region.
Images and videos shared on social media showed two huge plumes of smoke rising over St. Petersburg early Friday. They were also visible from space, NASA satellite imagery showed.
The Moscow Times was able to verify that one column of smoke was coming from the Wildberries logistics hub in the Shushary district, located roughly 15 kilometers (9 miles) south of the city center. The second was rising from the Utkina Zavod storage complex, located southeast of St. Petersburg.
In an earlier statement, Wildberries said that operations at two of its logistics sites in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region had been halted. It also said that staff at its warehouse in Crimea had been evacuated.
Separately, in the Kirov region northeast of Moscow, local authorities said six people were killed and more than two dozen others were injured in an attack on an industrial enterprise.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed later on Friday that his armed forces struck both Wildberries logistics centers and the Kirov region facility, which he claimed supplies aviation and missile equipment to the Russian military.
“The operation against Russian logistics, which supplies the occupying army with drone components, navigation equipment and military gear, remains underway,” Zelensky wrote in a post on X.
Before Friday, five Wildberries warehouses, accounting for around 10% of the company’s logistics capacity, had been attacked since last weekend, the newspaper Kommersant reported.
Together with smaller rivals, Wildberries and top competitor Ozon sell goods and services worth the equivalent of 8.5% of Russia‘s gross domestic product and employ 4 million people, or more than 5% of the country’s workforce.
Reuters contributed reporting.
