On the night of Wednesday 22 July, Ukraine launched a 223-drone raid against multiple Russian regions.
Ukraine reportedly struck a Wildberries logistics hub, an oil refinery, and a major oil pipeline station during these overnight attacks.
U.S. Army Spc. Harry Santiago IV, assigned to the Multi-Functional Reconnaissance Company, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), launches a Skydio X2D drone on Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, Romania, July 09, 2025. V Corps provides essential support to multinational training and exercises of robust and evolving complexity, scope, scale, rigor, and operational conditions and provides targeted security force assistance alongside national and multinational corps and divisions. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Breanna Bradford)
Russia claimed it intercepted 223 drones but also acknowledged casualties and damage across several regions.
Another case of “you cannot make ends meet” when Russian official reports from their armed forces are laid side-by-side with Ukrainian news service accounts.
The number of drones is not as large as some recent attacks, and many of the targets hit are not as high-profile as those struck last weekend and the beginning of this week.
What Retired US Intelligence Told Us
But what is significant here, said a retired US intelligence official with long experience in analyzing the Russian and Ukrainian military, is “first of all you can see that the Ukrainians are attacking in mass, and not just in mass, but they are also going after multiple targets.”
“Secondly, and this is what may eventually really start to cripple Russia supporting its war effort. The Ukrainians are getting down into the weeds of the Russian infrastructure – the smaller refineries, depots, more strikes at Wildberries warehouses outside of Moscow, etc,” he continued.
Lancet Drone from Russia. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
“And then think about the fact that this is just a single night of attacks. Three months ago, each one of these attacks on any one of these sites would have been just one night’s work for all of Ukraine’s drone force. This just shows what happens when Moscow has lost control of the battlefield.”
Attacks on Voronezh
One of the several attacks that Russian monitoring channels reported was a series of explosions over Voronezh during the early hours of Thursday. “Voronezh is under a massive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) attack. One of the likely targets could be the Wildberries logistics hub,” according to the Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+.
However, the Astra outlet said it had not confirmed reports of a strike or fire at the Wildberries warehouse in the Novaya Usman district.
This area of Novaya Usman is a large rural locality (selo) and the administrative center of the Novousmansky District in Voronezh Oblast.
Voronezh Governor Alexander Gusev confirmed that the overnight attack caused casualties and what he described as “serious consequences,” but did not specify which facilities had been hit this night.
“Dear Voronezh residents! Air defense forces repelled an enemy attack on civilian facilities throughout the night. Unfortunately, there are casualties and serious consequences. We will provide details after emergency services complete their work,” Gusev wrote on his media site.
In a later update, the governor stated that the local air defense units had shot down 36 UAVs overnight over Voronezh and also in six other districts across the region.
“As a result of a UAV crashing in a suburb of Voronezh, a fire broke out in a private home, where, unfortunately, a three-year-old boy was killed.
His parents sustained injuries of varying severity,” he wrote. Gusev also reported that a 19-year-old man in the same municipality had suffered minor injuries but did not require hospitalization.
“The roof of a marketplace warehouse and the façade of another warehouse were damaged. In addition, windows were shattered in nine private homes, while roofs and outbuildings were also damaged. Fifteen apartments in five residential buildings will require window replacement and utility repairs,” he added.
Oil Transport and Storage Destroyed
Exilenova+ also reported a strike on the Subkhankulovo Linear Production and Dispatching Station (LPDS) near Tuymazy in the Russian Bashkortostan republic.
The report claims one of the oil storage tanks caught fire after at least eight reported drones impacted targets at the site.
This strike was later confirmed by Serhiy Sternenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s former defense minister. According to Sternenko’s account, the Subkhankulovo LPDS is one of the key nodes in Russia’s Transneft pipeline network.
It also manages oil flows from Western Siberia and Bashkortostan to refineries and export pipelines.
These linear production and dispatching stations are critical components in Russia’s oil transport network. The system receives crude oil from multiple fields, blends them, and then pumps it into trunk pipelines.
Disabling these facilities can disrupt fuel being supplied to multiple refineries simultaneously.
Any of these transit points being put out of action by an air attack is almost always more difficult and takes more time to repair than damage to an individual refinery.
This is one of the main reasons that Ukrainian forces have begun to increasingly target pumping stations alongside refineries.
This creates additional disruptions to Russia’s fuel logistics and military supply chain.
If attacks like this continue over the coming weeks, Russia’s fuel supply networks could easily lose any of the progress they have made stabilizing them.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
