Not About Wildberries – Russia Attacks All Ukrainian Infrastructure Since 2022

On the night of Wednesday, Aug. 5, Russia launched a massive attack against humanitarian infrastructure in Ukraine. The large-scale missile strike, which included 28 ballistic missiles, destroyed up to 100,000 square meters (25,000 acres) of warehouse facilities at several locations around Kyiv.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The attack damaged refrigerated storage facilities used by the capital’s leading supermarket chains, warehouses belonging to the major retail chains Rozetka and Epicentr, warehouses of the Novus and Silpo supermarket chains, as well as storage facilities belonging to many well-known brands, including: The warehouse of Liqui Moly was completely destroyed. The warehouse containing Bosch products was completely destroyed. Warehouses belonging to Puma, Intertop, and Toyota were damaged. Among other losses, Toyota lost a warehouse of spare parts used for warranty servicing of vehicles. Russian propaganda immediately began spreading across social media – targeting both European and Ukrainian audiences – claiming that the warehouse strikes were supposedly retaliation for Ukraine’s attacks on Wildberries. In fact, this narrative is nothing new. Russia has long claimed that it is supposedly forced to carry out retaliatory strikes, using this argument to justify its barbaric terror against Ukraine’s civilian population. But this is precisely where the fundamental problem lies. Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s humanitarian sector and civilian logistics have never stopped since the very first day of the full-scale invasion. Ukraine’s strikes against Russia’s commercial infrastructure began less than a year ago. From the very first day The truth is that Russia’s massive attacks on Ukraine’s humanitarian sector and civilian infrastructure began on the very first day of the full-scale war. Other Topics of Interest Ex-Defense Minister Fedorov Says Ukraine Must Strike Russian Missile Launchers, Addresses Possible Return Fedorov called nationwide protests calling for his return a “manifestation of democracy.” During the first days of the invasion, fuel depots belonging to major gas station chains – including OKKO, KLO, and several smaller operators – were burned down. Combined with the disruption of diesel and gasoline supplies from Belarus – Russia’s ally – this led to Ukraine’s fuel crisis in May and June 2022, when motorists often had to wait for several hours at gas stations. During that same first month of the full-scale invasion, Russian bombing destroyed one of the country’s largest pharmaceutical warehouses near Kyiv, owned by the pharmaceutical giant Farmak. For several weeks afterward, Ukraine experienced shortages of medicines for diabetics and disinfectants. In early March 2022, the largest shopping center in Chernihiv – a city of 300,000 people in northern Ukraine that was under siege – was destroyed. The store’s management allowed residents to take from the ruins anything that could be useful for the civilian population. The burned Epicentr hypermarket was restored only a year and a half later. Epicentr in Chernihiv after the siege, spring 2022 (Photo by Suspilne) During the same period, the Chernihiv Combined Heat and Power Plant, schools, two grocery supermarkets, and several gas stations were destroyed. The First City Hospital and the regional cardiology center were also struck. Those direct Russian bombings killed 47 people. Because the roads out of the city were under constant Russian fire, tens of thousands of civilians were unable to escape the besieged city. Had it not been for the decisive actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which ultimately lifted the siege, Chernihiv could have shared the fate of Mariupol. In the encircled city of Mariupol, Russian forces burned down the city’s largest Silpo and Epicentr supermarkets on March 3, 2022. Epicentr in Mariupol, March 3, 2022 (Photo by Ministry of Interior of Ukraine) They later destroyed the city’s largest shopping mall, Port City, which housed several thousand square meters of retail space occupied by popular brands. However, this was only the beginning. Within the following month, Russian forces would destroy virtually the entire city of Mariupol. Hundreds of residential buildings, dozens of supermarkets, schools, the seaport, two major steel plants, the drama theater, and the maternity hospital were destroyed. According to various estimates, between 20,000 and 40,000 civilians were killed. On June 27, 2022, one of the most tragic episodes of that year occurred when Russian Kh-22 anti-ship missiles struck the Amstor shopping mall in Kremenchuk. Twenty-two people were found dead at the scene. Sept.11, 2022 was the beginning of systematic terror attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Russia struck Kharkiv CHP-5, the Zmiiv Thermal Power Plant, and multiple electricity transmission lines. Since then, Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has remained under constant attack by the Russian military using every type of weapon at its disposal. During 2024-25, Russia also carried out large-scale attacks against Ukraine’s civilian logistics infrastructure, including food warehouses belonging to the Fozzy and ATB supermarket chains. Since Feb. 24, 2022, a total of 167,000 strikes have been recorded against civilian infrastructure and critical facilities across Ukraine. These large-scale attacks have been carried out in waves with the objective of destroying the country’s energy system, residential neighborhoods, hospitals, and logistics network. One of the hardest-hit companies has been the ATB supermarket chain. Between 2022-26, more than 30 ATB stores were completely destroyed, while over 100 others were damaged, looted, or left in temporarily occupied territories. Many local stores continue to sustain regular damage in frontline cities such as Pokrovsk, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, and others. The same applies to postal terminals. Over four years of war, approximately 70 deliberate or collateral strikes have been recorded against Nova Poshta’s infrastructure. Slightly fewer attacks have targeted the facilities of the national postal operator Ukrposhta. Epicentr, Ukraine’s largest home improvement and retail chain, has suffered attacks on 17 of its shopping centers and warehouse facilities. Ten of these sites have been completely destroyed. Beginning in the first months of the war – including in Bucha, Chernihiv, Mariupol, Kharkiv, and other cities – a number of the company’s hypermarkets were destroyed by shelling and fires. During subsequent large-scale attacks, the Russian military deliberately targeted the company’s warehouses and manufacturing facilities, completely destroying warehouses on Kyiv’s left bank (on Viskozna Street) and in Kalynivka in Kyiv Oblast, while also inflicting critical damage on the Epicentr Ceramic Corporation plant. Methodically destroying everything that continued to function, Russian forces eventually reached even warehouses storing cosmetics distributed through network marketing. Large warehouses containing Mary Kay cosmetic products, among others, were destroyed by the Russian military near Kyiv during the second week of the full-scale invasion, in March 2022. “Russia has a specific objective. It is connected with bringing about a nationwide blackout during the winter. This could lead to the freezing and destruction of utility networks, with consequences that would last for many years,” Russian political analyst and propagandist Vasily Kiselev stated. The explicit goal – the destruction of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people – was articulated as early as March 2022 in the article “What Russia Should Do with Ukraine” by political commentator Timofey Sergeytsev, one of Vladimir Putin’s ideological supporters. Ukrainian analysts who study the Russian security services and Putin’s regime fully agree with this assessment. According to Larisa Yakubova, Doctor of Historical Sciences and author of numerous books on the Soviet security services, Russia’s failure to conquer Ukraine militarily has led it to pursue the destruction of Ukraine by other means. “This is not about retaliation for anything. It is about engineering and creating a humanitarian catastrophe, a blockade, and ultimately genocide. The Kyiv city authorities – and not only they – must wake up and work to prevent this,” Yakubova says. There, however, is a more practical explanation for the attacks on warehouses in Ukraine. Military personnel interviewed by Kyiv Post note that some of the missiles used in Russia’s latest attacks are surface-to-air missiles originally designed for the S-400 air defense system. These missiles are not particularly effective against the growing wave of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian infrastructure. According to these sources, such missiles are considerably less accurate than the Iskander ballistic missile system. As a result, targeting warehouses is likely explained by a simple fact: warehouse complexes occupy very large areas, making them much easier to hit despite the missiles’ lower accuracy. The Russian propaganda narrative portraying these attacks as “retaliation” for Ukrainian strikes collapses when confronted with reality. Russia has been carrying out thousands of strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure since the morning of Feb. 24, 2022, when Russian troops crossed Ukraine’s borders along the entire front – from the Kyiv region to Kherson. Ukraine’s first retaliatory strike on Russian territory occurred only three months later. In May 2022, helicopters struck an oil depot near the city of Belgorod, close to the Ukrainian-Russian border. For a very long time, however, this remained an isolated exception. Thereafter, and until 2024, Ukrainian strikes were directed primarily against military facilities inside Russia or installations in occupied Crimea involved in military coordination and reconnaissance. Perhaps the only target that could be described as “civilian” during that period was the Crimean Bridge. Even then, the bridge can hardly be regarded as a civilian object on Russian territory: it was illegally constructed in occupied Crimea and was being used extensively for Russian military logistics. With the rapid development of drone technology, however, Ukraine demonstrated that the game of targeting energy infrastructure could be played by both sides. Beginning in 2024, Ukraine launched systematic strikes against Russia’s oil refining infrastructure – operations that continue to this day. Strikes against Russian retail infrastructure, including Wildberries, began only in the spring of 2026 – after four years of Russian terror directed against Ukrainian retail chains, fuel depots, gas stations, grocery stores, hospitals, maternity hospitals, power plants, and ordinary residential buildings. Those strikes have a specific rationale, which we have previously examined. Wildberries has become Russia’s largest hub for the accumulation and distribution of sanctioned goods entering the country through sanctions evasion schemes. In addition, the company actively trades in military-related products, including combat drones, aerial bomb-release systems, body armor, tactical load-bearing equipment, and numerous other military supplies, many of which are themselves subject to international sanctions. The question of “retaliation” should therefore be framed differently. Rather than viewing Russia’s attacks as retaliation for Ukrainian strikes against Russian retail, it is more accurate to regard Ukraine’s strikes against Russian retail infrastructure as measures to stop Russia’s economy to support the war and Russia’s years-long campaign of terror against Ukraine’s civilian population – a campaign that Russia itself has elevated to the level of state policy. Over the course of four years, according to even the most conservative estimates - and excluding the victims of Mariupol, where between 20,000 and 40,000 people were killed in the bombardment – more than 17,000 civilians, including nearly 1,000 children, have become victims of that campaign.