Ukraine has unleashed what is believed to be its most intense bombing campaign of the war, setting fires across Russia and blowing up a drone factory last night.
A total of 1,165 drones, bombs and missiles were downed or destroyed by Putin‘s forces.
In Belgorod, just 20 miles from Russia’s border with Ukraine, a drone factory was targeted by drones.
Footage shared online showed the factory being blown up. A woman was heard saying: ‘Everything’s on fire there, everything. It’s a disaster, that’s where they make drones and teach you how to fly them. It’s ****ed, it’s all blown up.’
In attacks on Ukraine’s best day of the war striking Russia, he lost two major oil refineries Saratov and Ufa, and a Wildberries base at Novosemeykino in Samara region, while also facing attacks on the Engels-2 airbase, home to his strategic bomber aircraft.
Fuel trucks heading to Russia-controlled Crimea were also hit.
Also among the targets of the strikes was a warehouse belonging to the Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries in the Vladimir region, about 112 miles east of Moscow.
‘A fire broke out at one of the company’s logistics sites in the Vladimir region following an attack,’ Wildberries said in a statement, adding that warehouse staff had been evacuated.
Regional governor Alexander Avdeyev said the attack on the warehouse owned by ‘Russia’s Amazon’ was carried out by drones.
Ukrainian drones struck fuel trucks heading to Crimea
Among the targets of the strikes was a warehouse belonging to the Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries in the Vladimir region
‘There is damage and a fire,’ he posted on the Russian messaging app Max, adding that ‘a young man was injured’.
Since mid-July, Ukraine has struck around 20 sites belonging to Wildberries across various parts of Russia and in annexed Crimea.
The initial attacks on the night of July 17-18 left eight people dead and nearly 90 wounded at sites in the Moscow and Tambov regions.
Since then, Ukrainian drone strikes have targeted sites near Saint Petersburg, in Simferopol in Crimea, in Krasnodar and Volgograd, and in Samara.
Wildberries is a highly popular online retail platform in Russia, often dubbed the ‘Russian Amazon’.
The attacks on its warehouses are part of a campaign of long-range Ukrainian strikes targeting civilian infrastructure in Russia, which has been waging a large-scale offensive in Ukraine since February 2022.
Kyiv says the aim is to force the Kremlin to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
Russia said this morning that it was stepping up protection of ships in the Azov-Black Sea basin while also developing alternative cargo routes, in a move that follows a sharp escalation of attacks at sea by both sides in the war in Ukraine.
The Russian transport ministry said that in response to ‘the tense situation in the Sea of Azov stemming from hostile drone attacks on maritime vessels’, it had set up a task force to find new routes and switch cargo flows to other modes of transport.
‘A number of stevedoring companies have already expressed their readiness to handle additional cargo volumes and accelerate shipment rates at their terminals, within the limits of their operational capabilities,’ it said in a statement.
Together with the defence ministry, ‘additional measures are being implemented to ensure navigational safety and to protect maritime vessels in the Azov-Black Sea basin’.
A burned car is seen after a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026
A local woman reacts at the site of a Russian attack on a residential area in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, August 2 2026
Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, and Ukraine, also a major agricultural exporter, have been attacking each other’s agricultural export facilities and commercial vessels in the Black Sea area in recent weeks, driving wheat prices higher on global markets.
Russia’s main grain lobby group warned on Friday that Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian ships and ports could shut down grain exports via the Black Sea in the near future, pushing up prices and causing hunger in Africa and the Middle East.
Ukraine’s largest farming union, Ukrainian Agrarian Council, has also warned in recent weeks that Russian strikes on shipping near the southern port of Odesa were restricting Ukrainian exports in the key harvest period and could affect global food supplies.
