Ukraine targets Wildberries warehouses as Kyiv alleges military supply links

Ukraine has hit warehouses of Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, at least three times in a week, causing fires, deaths among employees and business losses.

Kyiv accuses the e-commerce company of storing drone parts and helping the Russian army. The attacks come as Ukraine has intensified retaliatory strikes on Russia in the fifth year of the war.

Early Saturday, Ukrainian drones hit Wildberries warehouses in Elektrostal and Kotovsk. Elektrostal is just outside Moscow, while Kotovsk is about 400 kilometres farther south in the Tambov region. The attack caused large fires and killed eight employees. On Wednesday, Ukrainian drones targeted two other Wildberries warehouses and logistics centres in southern Russia, killing one person and prompting evacuations. On Friday, Kyiv struck Wildberries warehouses outside Saint Petersburg and in Moscow-annexed Crimea.

After the attacks, Zelensky said Kyiv had struck logistics hubs involved in supplying the Russian army with drone components, navigation equipment and other gear.

Wildberries employs tens of thousands of people across Russia and has warehouses and pickup locations across the country, including in remote areas. Small and medium-sized businesses use its courier services. The attacks have affected sellers who depend on the platform. Viktoria Terekhova, founder of a children’s clothing brand, said in an Instagram video that she had lost practically all of her stock and had no way to obtain compensation.

Wildberries CEO Tatiana Kim said the company would support the families of wounded and killed employees, work on security measures and redirect goods. She said the company’s priority was to support more than 88,000 small and less protected entrepreneurs. Kim has not publicly answered Ukraine’s accusations. She said Kyiv had attacked ordinary people and said Wildberries was focused on redistributing goods across its warehouses and ensuring the financial stability of its partners.

Wildberries and Ozon are Russia’s most popular courier services. Kim is Russia’s richest woman, with estimated wealth of $8.1 billion, according to Forbes. She was born in Soviet Chechnya to an ethnic Korean family and founded Wildberries in 2004, reportedly from her Moscow apartment while on maternity leave with one of her seven children.

The company’s business model is based on a large network of pickup locations across Russia and in some neighbouring countries. Wildberries says it processes more than 20 million transactions a day. Since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022, its network has been accused of helping Russians avoid the effect of Western sanctions by offering goods that are otherwise unavailable in Russia. The platform sells products including clothing, medicine, children’s goods, furniture and Chinese products, and also allows people to sell used goods.

The company has not given an estimate of the losses from the Ukrainian strikes.