Ukraine Drone Strikes Push Wildberries to Scout Kazakhstan Warehouse Space
Ukrainian strikes on Russian logistics have driven Russia's largest online retailer to seek warehouse capacity abroad, with Kazakh businesses reporting at least $3 million in merchandise losses.
The operator of Wildberries, Russia's largest e-commerce platform, is scouting warehouse space in Kazakhstan after Ukrainian drone attacks damaged its Russian operations, according to reporting published Monday (2026-08-03). The move marks a new phase in Ukraine's deep-strike campaign: retail logistics, not just refineries, are now in the target set.5
Kazakh businesses have reportedly lost at least $3 million worth of merchandise in the strikes, Eurasianet reported. That figure illustrates how Ukraine's campaign is generating cross-border costs for a country that has carefully avoided aligning itself with either side of the conflict.5
The logistics damage sits inside a broader industrial assault on Russian infrastructure. Russian refineries processed an average of 3.91 million barrels of crude per day in early July, according to Energy Aspects data cited by Bloomberg — more than 1.4 million barrels per day below the prior year's average and the lowest national processing rate since March 2005. Moscow banned exports of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel in March in response.4
Even domestic supply has come under severe pressure. Meduza, analyzing 65,700 fuel transactions, found average daily gasoline and diesel sales held between roughly 118,000 and 150,000 tonnes per day from January through March before sliding to 104,000 tonnes in April, 106,000 tonnes in May and 80,300 tonnes in June. That June figure was 38% below the same month in 2025. Weighted average prices were 37% higher over the same comparison.4
Kazakhstan's exposure extends well beyond the Wildberries spillover. The Karachaganak field — one of the country's three largest oil and gas operations — cut crude output after a drone attack forced the shutdown of a Russian processing plant that handles its gas. Kazakhstan Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov told Interfax that production fell from roughly 34,000 metric tonnes per day to 25,000, equivalent to just over 180,000 barrels per day according to Bloomberg calculations.3
That dependency has no short-term fix. Karachaganak's gas routes through Russian infrastructure, and strikes on that plant cut Kazakh throughput regardless of Astana's stated neutrality in the conflict. The field is now running about 26% below its pre-strike rate.3
The scale of Russia's refinery exposure is visible at Omsk, the country's largest refinery at roughly 22 million tonnes of annual crude processing in 2024. A strike damaged the ELOU-AVT-11 unit there, a primary processing unit capable of handling 8.4 million tonnes of crude and 1.2 million tonnes of gas condensate per year. Omsk lies more than 2,000 kilometres from the front line.4
Russia's gas position was already deteriorating before the refinery strikes intensified. Natural gas production fell roughly 3.2% to about 334.8 billion cubic metres in the first half of the year, while LNG output declined 5.1% to around 16.5 million tonnes, according to federal statistics data. Russian pipeline gas now accounts for 18% of European imports, down from 45% in 2021.2,1
ICE Brent crude front-month was trading at $83.34 per barrel on Monday (2026-08-03), with Urals crude at $84.56 per barrel. The spread between those two benchmarks is one measure of how Russian crude flows are being repriced relative to global markets, though neither price alone captures the domestic fuel shortage building inside Russia.4
Wildberries' Kazakhstan move is still in early stages. Cross-border warehousing for a Russia-facing retail platform carries its own complications: customs procedures, transit costs and the question of how much of its customer base survives a prolonged domestic supply disruption. The recovery trajectory at Karachaganak — back toward 34,000 metric tonnes per day from its current 25,000 — is the most direct near-term indicator of how deeply Kazakhstan's own energy output remains tied to Russian processing infrastructure.3,5