Wildberries warehouse, major oil refinery burn as Ukraine strikes Russia's Ryazan Oblast, media reports

Editor's note: This is a developing story.

A Ukrainian drone strike in Russia's Ryazan Oblast the morning of July 29 targeted a Wildberries warehouse and one of the country's biggest oil refineries, according to reports by eyewitnesses and open-source monitoring channels.

The reports come amid a sustained Ukrainian strike campaign against the Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries, which has been hard hit by a string of consecutive attacks against its facilities over the past week.

Ukraine targeted the city of Ryazan with a "massive" attack in the early hours of July 29, according to regional Governor Pavel Malkov.

"Ryazan is experiencing a massive drone attack, and air defense systems are engaged. A fire has broken out on the territory of one of the enterprises," Malkov reported.

Emergency services are at work at the attack scene, the governor said. Later, he updated his report to include "fires in industrial areas" and said that six people had been hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.

Malkov did not specify which facilities had been hit.  

Local residents reported a series of explosions in the city and published photos and video footage online showing fires at multiple facilities. Locals said the Ryazan Oil Refinery and a Wildberries warehouse were both hit in the attack.

The Kyiv Independent could not verify these reports at the time of publication.

The Ryazan Oil Refinery is one of the largest refineries in Russia. Owned by Rosneft, the plant produces upwards of 17.1 million tons of oil per year and accounts for roughly 5% of the country's total processing output.

The facility has been a regular target of Ukraine's attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. A strike in May forced the Ryazan Oil Refinery to temporarily halt operations, contributing to a nationwide fuel crisis as Ukraine hammered refineries across Russia.

Beginning in July, Ukraine began aiming its drones at a new target: Wildberries warehouses, which process millions of goods per day — including military equipment.

Wildberries offers a number of dual-use items that can be used on the battlefield against Ukraine on its platform, including bulletproof vests and fiber-optic cable for drones.

Following the July attacks, the company reportedly hid these goods from search results for the keywords "everything for the SVO" and "SVO" — the Russian acronym for "special military operation," the Kremlin's official euphemism for the all-out war in Ukraine.

The company plays a significant role in Russia's consumer economy, accounting for almost 50% of Russia's online retail market. Wildberries has recently launched an advertising campaign urging Russians to support the platform's sellers in the wake of Ukraine's warehouse strikes.

Billboards in occupied Crimea have begun featuring these messages, according to local Telegram channels.

Following the reported attack on July 29, Wildberries announced on its website that access to the Ryazan warehouse had been "temporarily restricted."

"We will provide further information when operations are restored," the company said.