KYIV, July 20 — The shift is unmistakable: Ukraine’s drone campaign has crossed a threshold. What started as a tactical tool against military targets has evolved into a strategic weapon against the civilian infrastructure that funds Russia’s war machine. The recent strikes on Wildberries warehouses — part of a broader pressure campaign — mark a deliberate escalation.
Ukraine’s drone program has been quietly maturing since 2014. State-funded production now turns out models like the Liutyi, with a range of 1,000 kilometres and a payload of 50 kilograms, and the Bober, which flies 800 kilometres carrying 30 kilograms.
The Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) oversee strike planning — a sign of how central these operations have become to Kyiv’s war effort. The trend underneath is the targeting of dual-use civilian infrastructure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy laid out the logic on August 30, 2024: “We are striking those who profit from war.” The strategy simultaneously hits logistics hubs, oil refineries, and military supply chains.
The idea is to weaken Russia’s economic backbone — the state budget, which depends heavily on tax revenue from commerce and industry.
Strategic Blows and Russian Defenses
The Wildberries warehouses are a case in point. They store and distribute consumer goods across Russia, generating significant tax income for the Kremlin. Hitting them sends a signal: no part of the economy that funds the war is safe.
Russia claims to have intercepted 70% of drones targeting a Wildberries facility over the Leningrad region on August 21. But the remaining 30% struck the warehouse.
On September 1, Elektrostal — a city east of Moscow — was hit by a single drone that evaded air defense by flying at low altitude. These are not mass volleys; they are precision strikes designed to test and exploit gaps in Russia’s layered air defense network. Drones are typically launched from within Ukrainian territory, often at night to reduce visibility and increase the chance of reaching their targets.
The choice of timing and flight profile — low and slow — makes them harder to intercept, especially against older radar systems.
Production Scaling Up
What’s changing is the scale of the effort. Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov disclosed that Ukraine produces an estimated 1,000 long-range drones per month as of late 2024. That industrial capacity allows for sustained campaigns, not just one-off strikes.
Each month adds hundreds of new platforms capable of reaching deep into Russian territory. The economic pressure is mounting.
Experts estimate that each successful strike costs Russia roughly $50 million in direct damages and lost economic activity — a figure that includes destroyed goods, disrupted logistics, and the knock-on effect on supply chains. Compound that over dozens of strikes, and the cumulative burden becomes significant even for a large economy like Russia’s. Watch this space.
The shift from purely military to dual-use targeting signals a longer-term trend: Ukraine is betting that economic attrition will raise the cost of war for Russian leadership to untenable levels. With production capacity growing and air defenses still porous in many regions, the number of strikes is likely to rise.
The question is how Russia adapts — and whether Ukraine’s drone fleet can keep pushing the frontier of what’s possible in modern economic warfare.
