A warehouse fire, a body count and the new geography of the war

A warehouse fire is not supposed to become the emblem of a war, but this one did. In the Tambov region, a logistics centre belonging to Wildberries, the Russian e-commerce group, was reported by regional officials to have been completely destroyed after a drone strike. The site is in Kotovsk, about 500 kilometres southeast of Moscow, which is far enough to feel secure until it suddenly is not.

Tambov governor Yevgeny Pervyshov said about 100,000 square metres of the facility burned, roughly the area of 14 football pitches. He also said one person was injured and did not say whether the fire had been extinguished. The scale matters here, not because warehouses are glamorous, but because they are part of the machinery that keeps a modern economy moving.

The Tambov blaze was only one part of a broader overnight series of attacks. Another industrial facility in the Nizhny Novgorod region was damaged, according to the regional governor. In the Lipetsk region, Reuters quoted local authorities on Telegram as saying that a man and a 14-year-old were killed in a fire caused by a falling drone. A woman was killed in a separate drone attack in the Belgorod region, also according to local authorities cited by Reuters.

Wildberries has been struck before. According to the source material, Ukrainian drones have targeted its facilities since mid-July, and in recent days the retailer’s main rival, Ozon, has also come under attack. The two companies dominate one of the fastest-growing parts of the Russian economy, even as the wider picture is close to stagnation after four and a half years of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Ukraine has accused Wildberries of playing a role in Russia’s military supply chain; Moscow and the company say the facilities are used for civilian purposes.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 426 Ukrainian drones overnight, including over Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. That figure, like the casualty reports from local officials, comes from an official source and could not be independently verified in the source material.

Both Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly denied targeting civilians since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Yet the pattern has become more visible in recent months, with strikes on both sides of the front producing a growing number of civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure that is not military in any obvious sense. The latest night left a warehouse in ruins, several regions with damage, and another reminder that the war is increasingly being measured in logistics as much as in territory.

Written by Christiane Hofreiter christiane.hofreiter@alpineweekly.com