Drone strike on Moscow logistics hub leaves warehouse in flames

MOSCOW, 20 AUGUST 2026 —

An 18-hectare logistics warehouse on the southern edge of Moscow was still burning at dawn after one of Ukraine’s largest drone strikes to date, dark plumes of smoke twisting into the sky above the Russian capital’s southern outskirts.

Sunday’s double-strike routine—warehouse then field launch—gave reporters rare access to the 413th “Raid” Regiment as it expanded long-range attacks that Kyiv now uses to batter Russian military industries, energy sites and logistics hubs. The regiment’s commander said the assault on the Wildberries site, about 45 km south of the Kremlin, was part of an effort to erode Russian morale and pressure President Vladimir Putin toward negotiations.

“Muscovites should spend their nights in their metro,” Karas said, “just as residents of Kyiv have spent years going underground to escape Russian missile and drone attacks.”

Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, confirmed the attack in a statement posted to its Telegram channel. The company said the fire affected a distribution centre with more than 1 million parcels in transit and caused “significant damage,” but did not specify monetary losses or whether any staff were hurt. The scale of the blaze suggested potential losses running into billions of dollars of merchandise, analysts said.

The warehouse sits inside a logistics cluster that handles roughly 60 % of the company’s national order volume. Its destruction follows a pattern: since January, Ukraine has flown FP-1 drones on at least 12 deep-strike missions targeting Wildberries depots in Tula, Lipetsk, Pskov and now Moscow region.

Each raid has shuttered facilities for days, disrupted same-day delivery across 14 Russian regions and cost the company an estimated RM1.4 billion in lost goods and downtime, according to sector estimates cited by Russian business daily Kommersant.

Karas, a 38-year-old former philosophy student turned frontline officer, wrote a six-line verse on one drone fuselage before launch: “Moscow burns under the sky, red flame rises so warm and high, dark smoke moves above the town, fire lights the night all around.” Moments later the drone was airborne, joining a swarm that struck the depot an hour before dawn.

Sunday’s second wave launched from an open field 150 km west of Mariupol, where the 413th “Raid” Regiment maintains a forward operating strip camouflaged by sunflowers. The site has no fixed buildings; tents and generators are packed into two off-road vehicles that arrive, set up within 45 minutes and vanish before dusk.

Unit personnel include a former opera singer, a cellist, a computer programmer and a rapper. Routine is stripped to essentials: load warhead, test radio link, run pre-flight checklist, arm and release. The regiment’s challenge coin shows a three-prong arrow on one side and a relief of the Kremlin in flames on the other.

“In this phase of the war, Moscow should fear the skies,” Karas told reporters standing in the stubble of the sunflower field. He said the goal is not merely to destroy property but to make ordinary Russians associate the war with personal cost—fuel queues, delayed flights and the sudden absence of parcels from doorsteps.

Russian authorities have not issued casualty figures for the Wildberries strike and did not respond to requests for comment on air-defence interceptions or civilian impact. However, local emergency services reported no civilian injuries in the immediate area, while Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin acknowledged “a fire of significant scale” at an industrial facility.

Ukraine’s Security Service confirmed the dual operation and said the 413th Regiment flew FP-1 drones with a maximum range of 1,300 km and a warhead of up to 50 kg. Flight data published by the SBU showed the drones loitered above the target for 12 minutes before releasing their payloads, prolonging the thermal signature seen in thermal-imaging footage shot by Vasilisa Stepanenko for AP.

The surge in long-range strikes follows a dry period in late summer when Moscow’s layered air-defence systems appeared to blunt Ukrainian incursions. Yet after a lull of just 11 days, Kyiv’s drone corps resumed with larger payloads and tighter coordination between strike and reconnaissance units.

Analysts at the Royal United Services Institute in London said the new tempo reflects both Ukraine’s push to degrade Russian logistics before winter and its ability to produce roughly 400 FP-1 airframes per month at three facilities in Dnipro and Kharkiv.

“Each depot hit means one less warehouse that can refill frontline units,” said Dr. Marina Velychko, a Kyiv-based defence economist. “If Wildberries loses 48 hours of sorting capacity every time, the cumulative effect on morale and supply chains is considerable.”

Karas, who lost his brother defending Hostomel in March 2022, said he does not expect Moscow to capitulate quickly. “We need to punish them until they understand that peace is cheaper than war,” he said, standing beside the packed-up launch equipment. Moments later the two vans rolled away, tyres kicking up dust across the sunflower stalks.