Ukrainian drones have struck a warehouse belonging to Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries near St Petersburg, triggering a fire and injuring three people, according to local officials.
The attack occurred early Friday, with an AFP reporter witnessing thick grey smoke rising over the city’s skyline. St Petersburg is located more than 800 kilometres (500 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the surrounding Leningrad region, confirmed that a Wildberries warehouse caught fire following the drone strike.
“Three people were wounded,” Drozdenko said in a statement on social media.
The incident marks the third reported attack on Wildberries facilities by Ukraine within a week. A logistics hub belonging to the company outside Moscow was reportedly targeted last weekend, killing eight night-shift workers and destroying the facility in a fire.
Following the earlier attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky alleged that the facilities were being used to supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment.
Kyiv has described its intensifying long-range drone campaign against Russian targets as “long-range sanctions”, arguing that the strikes are retaliation for Russia’s repeated drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities.
The latest attack also disrupted air travel in the region, with St Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport temporarily suspending operations. Flights resumed at around 06:00 local time, although approximately 50 departures were reportedly affected.
Wildberries said two of its warehouses in the city had temporarily suspended operations but provided no further details about the incident.
Russian authorities rarely acknowledge that Ukrainian drones have successfully struck their intended targets, generally reporting only the interception of drones or attributing damage and fires to falling debris.
The latest incident comes amid an escalation in long-range attacks by both Russia and Ukraine. Moscow has intensified missile strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, while Ukraine has increasingly targeted Russian energy, military and logistics infrastructure deep inside the country.
US President Donald Trump has appeared to support Ukraine’s counter-attacks against Russia, describing the strikes as an escalation that could ultimately contribute to ending the conflict.
However, efforts by Washington to broker a peace agreement have made limited progress, while Moscow continues to demand that Ukraine permanently surrender territory it still controls and abandon Western military support.
The Kremlin has maintained that Ukrainian strikes are strengthening its resolve to continue the war and has threatened to seize additional territory in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The United Nations has reported a sharp rise in civilian deaths in 2026, with June recorded as the deadliest month since mid-2022.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, although an exact death toll remains unavailable as neither side routinely publishes comprehensive figures on military casualties.
