Ukraine targets Russia’s biggest online retailer

The Ukrainian attacks on the sprawling Russian warehouses produced stark images, with massive pillars of black smoke rising above fires that raged at facilities for Wildberries, the country’s biggest online retailer and its equivalent of Amazon.

Kyiv’s drones first hit the sites over the weekend in Elektrostal, just east of Moscow, and in the Tambov region, killing eight people and injuring scores more. Two more Wildberries warehouses — in the southern Krasnodar and Stavropol regions — were attacked and set ablaze early Wednesday. One person was killed, and 14 others were hurt. The strikes are a part of Kyiv’s aerial campaign inside Russia, aiming to undermine its wartime economy and make its citizens feel the consequences of the Kremlin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine.

Wildberries was launched in 2004 by Tatyana Kim, a teacher and a young mother at the time, focusing at first on selling clothes. Since then, the platform with its distinct purple logo has become an industry leader and household name, allowing big and small businesses alike to sell their goods to customers across the country by storing, shipping and delivering their inventory. In April, Forbes Russia estimated Kim’s fortune at $8.1 billion. The marketplace features all sorts of goods — clothes, books, cosmetics, toys, appliances, household items, sports gear and much more. There’s an “E-Pharmacy” page and a travel section where users can book plane tickets or hotels.

In 2021, Kim acquired a small bank and turned it into what now is Wildberries Bank, but that institution has since come under sanctions by the UK and the European Union.

Last year, Kim said the company had more than 200 facilities totaling over 5.2 million square metres (55 million square feet), with plans to expand in 2026, including planned warehouses in Belarus and Kazakhstan, where Wildberries already operates. Some 500,000 to 800,000 sellers are involved with Wildberries, estimated Sergei Semko, leading analyst with Data Insight, a Moscow-based company that analyzes online retail in Russia. Wildberries currently accounts for 52 per cent of all online orders in Russia, Semko said.

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not name Wildberries directly, he has said the facilities his country attacked were involved in supplying gear and various technical components to the Russian military. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that “it is not the case” and accused Kyiv of continuing to “strike civilian targets.”