Five dead in Moscow as Ukraine continues warehouse strikes
Developing story first seen 2 hours ago
At least five people were killed and ten injured after a Ukrainian drone strike hit a warehouse near Moscow overnight, in what Ukrainian media linked to Wildberries, a major Russian online retailer often compared to Amazon. Kyiv has been targeting Wildberries facilities in recent weeks, alleging they supply the Russian military, a claim Moscow denies. The strikes form part of the continuing exchange of long-range attacks between the two countries, with Russia also launching strikes on Ukrainian territory overnight.
The Moscow strike hit an industrial site in Novoselki, Chekhov, about 69km south of the Kremlin, sparking a warehouse fire; Wildberries confirmed a separate facility of its in St Petersburg was also struck, with further sites reportedly hit in Tver. Russia said it intercepted 320 drones overnight. In Ukraine, Russian strikes killed an 89-year-old woman and two girls in Mykolaiv, and a woman and two more girls in Sumy, with additional casualties and damage reported in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi and Dnipro.
- Ukrainian drone strike near Moscow kills five, injures ten at a warehouse
- Strike reportedly hit a Wildberries site Kyiv says supplies Russia's military
- Russian strikes on Ukraine kill at least four, including children, overnight
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Ukraine and Russia have spent months trading long-range strikes deep behind each other's front lines, using drones and missiles to hit military and industrial targets far from the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. Moscow, though hundreds of miles from the fighting, has increasingly come under attack from Ukrainian drones, while Russia continues to strike Ukrainian cities and towns most nights.
A recurring target in these Ukrainian strikes has been Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, similar in scale and function to Amazon. Kyiv says some of its warehouses are being used to store or move supplies for the Russian military, an allegation the company and the Russian government reject. Several Wildberries sites have been hit in different Russian regions in recent weeks.
The exchange of strikes matters because it shows neither side's civilian population is fully insulated from the war, even far from the front line, and because disputes over what counts as a legitimate military target, such as a retail warehouse, are central to arguments about how the conflict is being fought on both sides.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Advocates of the strikes argue that a nation under invasion has the right to disrupt its adversary's war-supporting infrastructure, and that if facilities operating under the Wildberries brand are genuinely being used to store, sort or distribute military-related goods, they become legitimate targets regardless of their civilian commercial origins. On this view, Ukraine has limited means to blunt Russia's logistics and mobilisation capacity compared with Russia's much larger arsenal, so long-range strikes on dual-use sites are a proportionate and necessary tool of self-defence rather than indiscriminate aggression. Supporters also note that Russia continues to strike Ukrainian cities nightly, killing children and the elderly, and argue Kyiv cannot be expected to unilaterally restrain attacks on militarily relevant targets while its own civilians are killed.
The case against
Critics argue that Wildberries is fundamentally a civilian retail company comparable to Amazon, and that striking its warehouses risks killing ordinary logistics workers and night-shift staff with only unverified claims linking specific sites to military supply chains. They contend that even if some goods moving through such warehouses eventually reach the military, this thin connection does not clearly meet the threshold for a legitimate military target under the laws of armed conflict, and that repeated strikes on civilian-branded commercial infrastructure blur an important line protecting non-combatants. This side also raises concern that such strikes deepen a cycle of long-range attacks on both sides' civilian-adjacent infrastructure, with mounting human cost that outweighs any marginal military disruption achieved.
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