Ukraine drone strikes bring Russia retail giant Wildberries into war

Tallinn,UPDATED: Jul 23, 2026 23:18 IST

Ukrainian drone strikes on warehouses run by Wildberries, Russia's biggest online retailer, have brought one of the country's best-known consumer businesses into the war. The attacks began over the weekend at facilities in Elektrostal, east of Moscow, and in the Tambov region, killing eight people and injuring scores more. Early on Wednesday, two more Wildberries warehouses in the southern Krasnodar and Stavropol regions were attacked and set on fire, leaving one person dead and 14 others injured.

The strikes are part of Kyiv's wider aerial campaign inside Russia, aimed at weakening its wartime economy and making Russians feel the impact of the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Wildberries has become a major part of daily life in Russia since it was launched in 2004, and it now handles 52 per cent of all online orders in the country, according to Sergei Semko, a leading analyst at Moscow-based Data Insight.

Wildberries was founded by Tatyana Kim, then a teacher and young mother, and began by selling clothes. Its purple-branded platform has since grown into a household name, helping both large and small businesses sell goods across Russia by storing, shipping and delivering their inventory. In April, Forbes Russia estimated Kim's fortune at USD 8.1 billion. The marketplace sells clothes, books, cosmetics, toys, appliances, household items and sports gear, and also has an "E-Pharmacy" page and a travel section for booking flights and hotels.

In 2021, Kim bought a small bank and turned it into Wildberries Bank, which has since been sanctioned by the UK and the European Union. Last year, Kim said the company had more than 200 facilities covering over 5.2 million square metres, with plans to expand in 2026, including warehouses in Belarus and Kazakhstan, where Wildberries already operates. Semko said between 500,000 and 800,000 sellers are linked to Wildberries. Shoppers interviewed by AP in Moscow said the service remained convenient. "Well, if they raise the prices, I don't mind. It still saves me time, and time is even more valuable," said Irina Potapova.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not name Wildberries directly, but has said the facilities his country attacked were involved in supplying gear and technical components to the Russian military. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected that claim on Tuesday, saying "it is not the case" and accusing Kyiv of continuing to "strike civilian targets". An AP search of the Wildberries website found goods that could be used for both civilian and military purposes, including body armour, helmets, radios and other electronics. Some were marked as "tested in the SVO" or "SVO fighters' choice", using the Kremlin's term for the war in Ukraine. Wildberries did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Russia, meanwhile, regularly attacks Ukrainian logistics and retail facilities, including several hit last week.

The attacks have also hit many small businesses in Russia. Semko said online retailers such as Wildberries, Ozon and Yandex Market have allowed local craftsmen and entrepreneurs to sell goods across the country's vast territory. Since Saturday, users on social media have said stock stored in the attacked warehouses had been destroyed, describing their losses in emotional posts. The full extent of the damage is still unclear. Wildberries said it took three days to put out the fire at its Elektrostal facility, a key distribution hub for Moscow, while the site in Kotovsk in the Tambov region resumed operations on Thursday. Neither Kim nor the company has detailed the scale of the damage.

Peskov said on Tuesday that "the situation is difficult due to the losses suffered by both the company itself and representatives of small and medium-sized businesses". Wildberries has offered support measures including lower storage fees, free transfer of goods to other sites and discounted loans through Wildberries Bank. Many sellers have also asked whether they will be compensated, especially after the company changed its seller policy earlier this month to exempt itself from liability for stock damaged in a "force majeure", including drone attacks. Late on Wednesday, Kim said payments had begun to sellers whose goods were damaged at Elektrostal. "First and foremost, we want to support the smallest and most vulnerable entrepreneurs - there are more than 88,000 of them. The funds will appear on sellers' balances within 24 hours," she said.

Semko said there was not enough data for a full assessment, but estimated that the four hit facilities made up about 12 per cent of Wildberries' total warehouse space and that losses of goods could be as high as about USD 3 billion. He said this came on top of increased taxes, a fuel crisis and more regulatory hurdles faced by many small Russian businesses this year, calling it "almost a perfect storm".

Chris Weafer, chief executive of consultancy Macro-Advisory Ltd, said Russia's online retail sector has grown quickly since 2022 and now accounts for about 20 per cent of all retail sales in the country, up from much less than half of that five years ago. After many Western brands left Russia over the war in Ukraine, Wildberries and Ozon sourced products through parallel imports from Asia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, helping drive the rapid rise in online business, he said. Weafer estimated Russia's e-commerce sector to be worth around USD 150 billion, with online retail accounting for about USD 80 billion to USD 90 billion.

He said the warehouse attacks would add to the pressure on small businesses that have been "struggling very badly", while probably causing only "relatively slight" damage to the wider industry and economy, which he described as effectively stagnant but stable. More than the economic effect, he said, the strikes were about "undermining public morale, and getting people to talk much more" about the war. He said that since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, many people had treated the fighting as something far away, but regular strikes this year on oil refineries and now on Wildberries had changed that. "There is now much more awareness, but there's also much more discussion, and more people are questioning what's going on and why it's happening and the conflict lasting so long," he said. "It brings it home."

The Wildberries strikes have therefore hit a major retail network, disrupted thousands of sellers and drawn renewed attention to the war inside Russia, while Kyiv and Moscow continue to disagree over whether the targeted facilities were linked to military supplies.

With PTI Inputs

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