Ukraine Escalates Air War With Deadly Strikes on Russia's 'Amazon'

Ukrainian drones struck warehouses and other facilities across Russia overnight, killing at least 9 people and wounding more than 60, in what The Wall Street Journal described as an escalation of Ukraine’s air war against Russian territory. Among the targets was what the Journal characterized as Russia’s “Amazon” — the sprawling logistics network operated by Wildberries, the country’s largest e-commerce platform.

PBS News confirmed that the strikes hit warehouses and other sites spread across Russian territory. The death toll of nine represents a rise from earlier reporting, which had put the overnight figure at eight, suggesting some of the wounded succumbed to their injuries in the hours following the attacks.

Ukraine has not officially claimed responsibility for the raids, consistent with Kyiv’s standard practice of neither confirming nor denying specific long-range drone operations on Russian soil.

A Campaign Targeting Logistics

The attacks fit a pattern that has accelerated over the past 48 hours. Earlier strikes specifically targeted Wildberries warehouse facilities in and around Moscow, and a separate raid struck oil depots and distribution complexes, killing at least eight. Together, the operations signal a deliberate strategy of attacking Russia’s logistics infrastructure rather than purely military installations.

Wildberries operates one of Russia’s largest networks of warehouses and delivery hubs, processing orders across the country’s consumer economy. Ukrainian planners appear to have assessed these facilities as having military relevance, given that Russia’s civilian supply chains have become intermeshed with procurement and transport supporting the war effort. The legal and humanitarian status of such targets under international humanitarian law remains a contested question among legal scholars and military analysts.

By hitting distribution infrastructure at scale, Ukraine aims to impose costs that go beyond the battlefield — disrupting supply lines, straining Russian emergency services, and signaling to the Russian public that the war carries consequences inside their own borders.

Scale and Reach

The overnight raids extended across multiple Russian regions, with drones reaching targets well beyond Ukraine’s borders. Russia has invested heavily in air defenses around Moscow and other urban centers since the early months of the war, deploying layered radar systems, electronic warfare units, and interceptor aircraft. Despite those measures, Ukrainian drones have consistently penetrated Russian territory to strike deep-rear targets.

Ukraine’s domestic drone production has expanded significantly since 2022, with Ukrainian engineers developing longer-range, higher-payload variants capable of reaching targets across Russia. This industrial capacity — built largely outside the spotlight of Western military aid packages — has become one of Kyiv’s most consistent asymmetric tools.

Russia has responded to the sustained campaign by allocating more air defense assets to protecting civilian and economic infrastructure, a reallocation that, by definition, reduces coverage available for frontline military purposes.

Casualties and Russian Response

The nine fatalities and 60-plus wounded represent some of the highest confirmed single-night casualty figures from Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian soil since the large-scale invasion began in February 2022. Russian emergency services and regional governors have been the primary source of casualty data from these raids, and independent verification of the figures from Russian territory is limited.

Moscow has not yet announced retaliatory measures specifically linked to the overnight strikes, though Russia has historically responded to major Ukrainian air operations with waves of missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s power grid has been a primary Russian target during colder months, and escalating Ukrainian strikes deepen the cycle of mutual attacks on civilian-adjacent infrastructure.

Broader Conflict Context

The intensification of Ukraine’s air campaign comes as Washington conducts its own sustained military operations against Iran for the eighth consecutive night, following the deaths of U.S. military personnel in Jordan. The simultaneous conduct of active air campaigns against two separate adversaries — Russia through Ukrainian long-range operations and Iran directly by U.S. forces — marks an unusual moment in the current global security landscape.

Ukraine’s escalation also follows its sustained pressure campaign against Russia’s maritime shadow fleet in the Black Sea, demonstrating a multi-domain approach to targeting Russian economic and military capacity.

Whether the overnight raids represent a new operational tempo or a one-time surge remains unclear. The pattern of the past several days suggests that Ukrainian planners are pressing an advantage — deploying drones at a pace and geographic spread that strains Russian defenses and keeps Moscow’s emergency response apparatus under sustained pressure.

The death toll and scale of the latest strikes are expected to intensify diplomatic pressure from European governments that have monitored the campaign’s effect on the civilian population inside Russia, even as those same governments continue to support Ukraine’s broader war effort.

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Reporting from The Wall Street Journal and PBS News contributed to this article.