A wave of Ukrainian drone strikes targeting logistics facilities across Russia has left at least nine people dead, dozens injured, and knocked out roughly 12 to 15 percent of the total warehouse space of Russia’s largest e-commerce platform Wildberries, in what Kyiv frames as a strategic escalation of its cross-border aerial campaign against the Kremlin’s war effort.
The first attacks unfolded over the weekend, striking two sprawling Wildberries distribution centers: one in Elektrostal, an industrial city just east of Moscow, and a second in Russia’s Tambov region. The weekend strikes killed eight people and wounded dozens more. Early Wednesday, two additional Wildberries facilities in the southern Russian regions of Krasnodar and Stavropol were hit and engulfed in flames, killing one person and injuring 14 others. Thick plumes of black smoke billowed from the burning sites, visible for miles across the surrounding areas.
Kyiv’s cross-border drone strikes are part of a broader intentional strategy to disrupt Russia’s wartime economy and bring the reality of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine home to ordinary Russian citizens. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed that targets struck in these attacks are linked to supplying Russian military forces with equipment and technical components, though he did not name Wildberries explicitly. An independent check of Wildberries’ online marketplace by The Associated Press found a wide range of goods available that are suitable for both civilian and military use, including body armor, combat helmets, tactical radios, and other electronics. Many of these items were openly labeled with tags referencing Russia’s “special military operation” – the Kremlin’s official term for its full-scale war in Ukraine – such as “tested in the SVO” and “SVO fighters’ choice.”
To understand why Wildberries became a high-priority target, it is necessary to examine the platform’s extraordinary rise to dominate Russia’s domestic e-commerce sector. Founded in 2004 by Tatyana Kim, a former teacher and young mother, the company began as a small online clothing retailer. Today, with its recognizable purple branding, it is a household name across Russia and the undisputed industry leader, hosting more than 500,000 to 800,000 independent sellers and accounting for 52 percent of all online retail orders placed in the country. It offers everything from apparel and cosmetics to home appliances, pharmaceuticals, and even travel booking services, and expanded into financial services with the 2021 launch of Wildberries Bank – an arm that has since been placed under sanctions by the United Kingdom and European Union.
As of last year, Wildberries operated more than 200 warehouses and distribution centers across Russia and neighboring markets where it has expanded, totaling more than 5.2 million square meters of storage space. The company had planned further expansion into Belarus and Kazakhstan by 2026. Kim, who remains the company’s leader, had an estimated net worth of $8.1 billion as of April 2024, according to Forbes Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has rejected Ukraine’s claim that the targeted facilities support the Russian military, calling the assertion false and accusing Kyiv of deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure. Wildberries itself has not issued a formal response to the strikes beyond statements about operational resumption and support for affected sellers. The company confirmed it took three full days to extinguish the large fire at the key Elektrostal distribution hub, which serves the entire Moscow region, while the Tambov region facility in Kotovsk is scheduled to resume operations on Thursday. Neither Kim nor the company has released a full public accounting of the total inventory destroyed in the attacks.
Beyond the human cost and military strategic implications, the strikes have delivered a catastrophic blow to thousands of small and medium-sized Russian businesses that stored their entire inventory at the targeted warehouses. In the days after the attacks, hundreds of Russian entrepreneurs took to social media to share accounts of losing all their stock, many sharing emotional recountings of total business collapse. Sergei Semko, a leading e-commerce analyst at Moscow-based research firm Data Insight, noted that platforms like Wildberries have been a critical lifeline for small producers and craftspeople across Russia’s 11 time zones, allowing them to reach customers across the country’s vast territory that would otherwise be inaccessible. The damage from the strikes compounds a series of already severe pressures on Russian small businesses this year, including rising taxes, fuel supply disruptions, and growing regulatory burdens.
Semko estimates that total losses from the destroyed inventory could reach as high as $3 billion, describing the confluence of crises facing affected sellers as “almost a perfect storm.”
In response to widespread anger and uncertainty from sellers, Wildberries rolled out a series of support measures, including discounted storage fees, free transfer of surviving inventory to other undamaged facilities, and low-interest loans through Wildberries Bank. Controversy emerged earlier this month after the company updated its seller terms of service to exempt itself from liability for inventory damaged or destroyed during “force majeure” events, a category that explicitly includes drone attacks, leaving many sellers unsure if they would receive any compensation for their losses. Late Wednesday, however, Kim announced that the company had begun processing compensation payments for sellers affected by the Elektrostal attack. She emphasized that the company was prioritizing support for the smallest and most vulnerable entrepreneurs, of which there are more than 88,000 affected by the strike, and confirmed that funds would be posted to sellers’ account balances within 24 hours.