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War
Day 1606. Ukraine is hitting Wildberries warehouses in the Moscow and Tambov regions. There are dead, dozens of people injured
Since February 24, 2022, Meduza has been broadcasting live about the Russian-Ukrainian war. We publish your letters every day because we are sure that we need to continue talking about the war. Share with us your thoughts about the war. What feelings are you experiencing? How does war affect your life and your attitude towards the world? If you have a story related to the war, tell it . The feedback form is at the end of this article. A review of the previous day can be read here .
On the night of July 18, Ukrainian drones attacked several regions of Russia; the logistics centers of the Wildberries marketplace in the Moscow and Tambov regions came under attack.
In the Tambov region, a Wildberries warehouse in the city of Kotovsk was attacked. Governor Yevgeny Pervyshov claims that the air defense system “worked,” and 28 drones were shot down on approach to the city. “If they had reached their target, the number of civilian casualties could have been much higher,” he added.
According to the latest data, as a result of the attack on a warehouse in Kotovsk, seven employees working on the night shift were killed. Another 25 people were injured, 23 of whom were hospitalized. Most of them have shrapnel wounds, one person is in extremely serious condition, six are in serious condition. At approximately 5:30 a.m. Moscow time, Pervyshov reported that the open fire in the warehouse had been eliminated and fire suppression was continuing.
A Wildberries warehouse in the town of Elektrostal near Moscow came under attack from Ukrainian drones. In addition, drones struck the territory of an oil depot in Noginsk; for security reasons, a nearby maternity hospital was evacuated there, said the head of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov.
As a result of the attack in the Moscow region, 26 people were injured. Two people were injured in Noginsk, another 24 were injured as a result of a drone strike on the Wildberries warehouse in Elektrostal. Vorobyov clarified that some of the victims are in serious condition.
Update. By the evening of July 18, the number of victims increased to 61 people, Vorobiev said. According to him, 20 victims received outpatient care and did not require hospitalization. Another nine people are in serious condition, 31 are in moderate condition. The majority were diagnosed with shrapnel and mine blast wounds, traumatic brain injuries, fractures, burns and poisoning by combustion products. The most people were injured in Elektrostal, where drones attacked the Wildberries warehouse - 57 people. Four more are in Noginsk, where an oil depot came under attack.
Ukrainian telegram channels publish videos and photographs of a large-scale fire on the territory of the Wildberries logistics center in the Moscow region.
Subscribers of the Astra publication said that smoke from burning objects in the Moscow region is visible from a distance of 50 kilometers. Readers of Varlamov News sent photographs from Domodedovo near Moscow, in which the sky is covered with black smoke.
The attack on Wildberries warehouses was commented on by the head of the company, Tatyana Kim.
“A terrible night, terrible events for our company and for our country. This is a pain that cannot be expressed in words. My condolences to all the relatives and friends of the victims, we will definitely help their families. We will provide all the necessary support to the victims. As information becomes available, we will inform you in the official channel of the press service,” she wrote in her Telegram channel.
Kim did not say whether the marketplace will provide assistance to sellers whose goods were destroyed as a result of the attack. At the beginning of July, Wildberries added a clause to the contract with sellers that exempts the marketplace from liability for failure to fulfill obligations in the event of a drone attack.
Update. Later, Tatyana Kim reported that Wildberries was “working through” the issue of payments to sellers who lost their goods as a result of a Ukrainian drone strike on marketplace warehouses in the Moscow and Tambov regions. She said that the company will pay two million rubles to the families of the victims, and one million rubles to the victims who are in serious condition.
In the Vladimir region, a drone hit one of the apartments of a multi-storey residential building in the city of Vladimir, said the head of the region, Alexander Avdeev. There was a fire and it has already been put out. According to authorities, there were no injuries.
The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that overnight air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 379 Ukrainian drones over 19 regions of Russia, annexed Crimea, as well as the waters of the Azov and Black Seas.
War through the eyes of Meduza readers
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Meduza's readers live in different countries and have different attitudes towards the war. We publish your letters to see this event through your eyes. Our editors try to present all points of view, even if they do not coincide with the editorial position. However, in accordance with the Meduza code, we do not publish messages that contain “hate speech,” justify the murder of civilians, or express direct support for an aggressive war.
Elena (Moscow) . Some write: “Why did Zelensky begin to strike deep into Russia and terrorize civilians?” Allegedly, this makes Russians hate him even more and believe that the war with Ukraine is a good thing. I have no words for such questions... I don’t understand how you can be so shameless.
I encountered drones and explosions for the first time about a year ago, but I did not have hatred for Ukrainians or Zelensky, for me it was one night, in total, maybe about 10 nights in a year. And after one night of such explosions, I had thoughts that Ukrainians have been living like this for four years. The fact that these missiles contain my taxes, which I would like to spend, in fact, on ensuring that pensioners have large pensions, and not on taking the lives of citizens of a neighboring country. And I simply do not have the right to be angry that Ukraine is responding to the attacks of the aggressor.
What scares me most is that my friends with whom I grew up, who listened to IC3PEAK, Noize MC, Monetochka with me, began to say that all Ukrainians are “Bandera”, Zelensky is a “crazy clown” and so on.
But I still know that in Russia there are people against war, and it is important for me to remember this. Now, against the backdrop of the fuel crisis, for the first time I see that some people are starting to blame not Zelensky or Ukraine, but the Russian government. This already means a lot to me, because at least sometimes they begin to name responsibility correctly.
I don’t understand how you can demand that Ukraine not respond to the war. It seems to me that it would be more honest to ask not this, but why Russia started this war in the first place and why it has not yet stopped it.