Each day the Ukraine Conflict Update newsletter provides a straightforward view of developments on the battlefield. Subscribe for free to receive the complete edition in your inbox.

Ukrainian forces keep striking Wildberries sites. What impact could this have on the Russian economy?
The leader of Ukrainian firm Fire Point warned the moves could endanger the Russian financial sector.
A Russian Kh-101 missile seems to have landed inside Poland, creating a sizable hole in a field.
Ukraine lost one more F-16 jet, yet the pilot escaped safely.
The count of Geran drones sent against Ukraine dropped noticeably during July.
Chart of the day: Russian forces push forward in Donbas, yet the rate of territorial gains stays limited.
Videos of the day: Russian soldier tosses a drone; Ukrainian drone halts just in time; Rubikon strikes on Ukrainian unmanned aircraft.

Ukrainian units continue hitting storage sites of the Russian online retailer Wildberries. On Thursday morning strikes hit two locations - one in Penza roughly 600 km behind the front and another in Sarapul about 1,300 km from the line of contact.

Video shows flames and smoke rising from the damaged buildings.

Only two weeks earlier Ukrainian forces hit the first pair of Wildberries warehouses inside Russia. The pattern now shows a sustained effort that may influence both Russian military supplies and the wider national economy.

Officially the goal includes stopping sales of military items such as protective vests, unmanned aircraft, optic cables and related parts. The retailer once listed a section called Everything for the SVO that held more than 200,000 products according to Foreign Policy.

Some volunteers purchased gear for troops via the platform, though independent Russian analysts noted other supply routes existed and the armed forces rarely ordered directly from the site. Moscow described the warehouses as civilian targets.

The company has since removed the SVO section from its catalog.

Still, cutting off drone components and similar items may not be the sole or primary motive. The campaign could also weigh on the Russian economy at large.

At least twelve warehouses have been struck so far, cutting overall storage space by roughly ten percent. The largest facilities were the main targets among the firm’s total of around two hundred logistics centers.

Russians purchase nearly all goods through Wildberries, which handles about half of the country’s online trade. The platform works like Amazon by linking sellers with buyers. Roughly two hundred thousand Russian businesses use it.

Wildberries chief Tatiana Kim, who started the firm during maternity leave in 2004 and is now Russia’s wealthiest woman, appears to have anticipated the strikes. In early July the company updated seller rules to list fires and explosions as force majeure events, so it would not cover resulting losses.

Those losses therefore fall on the sellers - small and large Russian firms or individual traders. Analyst Andriy Shevchyshyn told RBC Ukraine that sellers lost goods valued between one and 1.3 billion dollars with total damage near two billion dollars.

Full compensation is unlikely, which could hurt many sellers whose median yearly earnings stand around 7,500 dollars. Experts still see no immediate wave of bankruptcies among small and medium businesses, RBC Ukraine reported.

Continued strikes could also reach the Russian banking sector. This spring VTB Bank, the country’s second-largest state bank, acquired a five-percent share in WB Bank, a Wildberries unit. The partnership brings the retailer closer to state structures.

Reuters reports the Russian government is now weighing financial support through VTB. Sales via Wildberries and Ozon fell about eleven percent in the past week.

Denys Shtilerman of Ukrainian firm FirePoint, whose drones carried out the warehouse strikes, also highlighted the banking angle. He said the attacks would hit Russian banks that had financed both Wildberries and Ozon, the second-largest online retailer.

Although Ozon sites have not yet been hit, its listed shares dropped around ten percent. Wildberries itself is not publicly traded.

Shtilerman stated this week that finishing off both platforms is essential and could trigger a banking collapse.

He added that VTB had staked heavily on Wildberries expecting to gain its fifty to sixty million customers as clients. Already in a weak position, the bank now faces the loss of trillions of roubles in loans, which could bring down Russia’s second-largest lender.

Whether the threat is truly that severe remains open to question, yet analysts agree the pressure on the economy is real.

The Russian state and Wildberries have begun to react. Reports indicate the company is seeking storage space in Kazakhstan beyond the reach of Ukrainian drones.

Independent Russian outlet The Bell noted that the main effect of the strikes may be psychological and political rather than purely economic, since online marketplaces form part of daily life for millions of Russians in a way distant refineries do not.

A Russian Kh-101 missile reportedly landed in Poland. Russia carried out another large strike on Ukraine overnight into Thursday. Its most striking feature is that a Kh-101 cruise missile appears to have entered Polish territory for the first time. Previously only drones had crossed into Polish or Romanian airspace.

The incident occurred near Tarnawa-Kolonia village roughly eighty km from the Ukrainian border. A large crater appeared in a field.

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk confirmed that Polish airspace was breached and that a missile fell near the village. No injuries or property damage occurred.

Tusk said all signs point to a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile. He added that Ukrainian air units stood ready to down the missile had it continued its path.

If confirmed this would mark the first Russian cruise missile to land in a NATO member state. Russia launched sixty-one Kh-101 and Kalibr missiles at Ukraine that night, fifty-four of which were intercepted.

Ukraine lost another F-16 fighter jet, the Ukrainian Air Force announced. The loss occurred during a combat mission on Wednesday, 29 July.

On one sector of the front the pilot was intercepting enemy aerial targets when an emergency forced the pilot to eject, the air force stated.

It remains unclear whether the jet was shot down or suffered a technical failure. Ukraine uses F-16s to intercept drones and cruise missiles as well as to strike ground targets.

The pilot survived and was recovered. Analysts note that the loss of trained pilots may prove more damaging than the loss of the aircraft themselves.

Ukraine has now lost five F-16s out of roughly fifty received, with Belgium set to supply another fifty around 2030.

On Tuesday, 28 July, the United States confirmed that a Ukrainian F-16 had recently downed a Russian aircraft - the first air-to-air victory of the war.

General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate that a Russian fighter had been shot down, an event noted in this newsletter two weeks earlier.

He did not name the Russian type, though Ukrainian sources had identified it as an Su-35 on the eastern front.

Russia launched another major air attack on Ukraine using 284 drones among other weapons. French analyst Clément Molin earlier published a chart showing the number of Geran and similar drones sent at Ukraine in recent months. The total fell sharply in July and will likely finish near half the record set in May.

Twenty-two days have passed since the last attack that used more than three hundred drones. April and May saw ten such strikes while June and July recorded only four.

Possible reasons include production difficulties, stockpiling for an autumn and winter energy campaign, or a shift toward the more costly jet-powered Geran-4 model that can be built in smaller numbers.

Recent months show Ukrainian forces now down more than ninety percent of Geran drones. Ballistic missiles remain harder to counter due to limited Patriot and other suitable interceptors.

Number of Geran drones and decoys shot down (blue) and not shot down (red):

Chart of the day

In recent days Ukrainian reports describe growing Russian pressure in Donbas. Russian units are pushing deeper into Kostiantynivka, now fully in the grey zone, and striking beyond the city toward Dobropillia. They are also advancing east of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk and stand ten to thirteen km from those cities.

Yet the number of square kilometres gained remains modest. Data from the conservative DeepState UA account, which updates its map slowly, shows only ten square kilometres captured last week. The overall slow pace of advance has held steady since April. Location matters as much as area, and the approach to the last major Donbas cities raises concern.