Ukraine’s campaign of deep strikes against oil refineries, military bases, and logistics targets has brought the war home to the Russians. The past week has seen at least several attacks on the warehouses of Wildberries, an e-commerce retailer often described as the Russian Amazon. The the opening salvo at the flagship company’s logistics center near Moscow produced a plume of smoke so large that it could be seen from spacedarkening the sky over much of the metropolitan area. Another attack burned down Wildberries’ equipment hubs in St. Petersburg, Tver, and Simferopol in occupied Crimea. The company’s warehouses in Krasnodar, Tambov, and Voronezh were call tooand killed several workers.
This is not a new goal for the Ukrainian army, although it may seem like one at first. Tens of millions of ordinary Russians use Wildberries almost every day to buy everything from laundry detergent and baby formula to cheap sneakers, dresses and headphones. The Kremlin has not missed an opportunity to accuse Kyiv of attacking civilian infrastructure and committing war crimes. That’s hypocritical, given that Russia has spent years targeting Nova Poshta, Ukraine’s largest private company, destroying the company’s facilities and killing at least ten employees. three of them soon July 19.
Ukraine’s campaign of deep strikes against oil refineries, military bases, and logistics targets has brought the war home to the Russians. The past week has seen at least several attacks on the warehouses of Wildberries, an e-commerce retailer often described as the Russian Amazon. The the opening salvo at the flagship company’s logistics center near Moscow produced a plume of smoke so large that it could be seen from spacedarkening the sky over much of the metropolitan area. Another attack burned down Wildberries’ equipment hubs in St. Petersburg, Tver, and Simferopol in occupied Crimea. The company’s warehouses in Krasnodar, Tambov, and Voronezh were call tooand killed several workers.
This is not a new goal for the Ukrainian army, although it may seem like one at first. Tens of millions of ordinary Russians use Wildberries almost every day to buy everything from laundry detergent and baby formula to cheap sneakers, dresses and headphones. The Kremlin has not missed an opportunity to accuse Kyiv of attacking civilian infrastructure and committing war crimes. That’s hypocritical, given that Russia has spent years targeting Nova Poshta, Ukraine’s largest private company, destroying the company’s facilities and killing at least ten employees. three of them soon July 19.
Look closely, however, and Wildberries make a surprisingly obvious target. The retailer has become a major distribution center for the Russian war effort. With official military equipment fraught with shortages, delays, inefficiency, and corruption, Russian front-line units rely on private shipments and donations of equipment and supplies, often privately funded; Innumerable fighters also order for their own accounts. Until it happened quickly scrubbed from the site over the weekend, Wildberries featured a special catalog category “Everything for SVO,” using the Russian acronym for “special military operation.” The catalog included more than 200,000 listings, including not only war-themed coffee mugs but also thousands of battlefield items, such as body armor, tactical helmets, and specialized drone components such as landing gear and tail fins designed for Russian bombers. (Items are still listed but now under other categories.)
Most ads come with the “tested in SVO” badge and official Russian approval stamps, meaning that this business is fully encouraged by the platform. As of last week, top results in the SVO category included a Br2 military helmeta vest of arms and ballistic plates tested for fire fighting, and combat medical kit; Same day shipping available for an additional fee. Verified buyers gave these top products a near-perfect star rating, with buyers writing that they were ordering “for people in SVO.” President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky he said on X last week that the strikes were destroying “equipment facilities involved in supplying the Russian military with drone equipment, navigational equipment, and other tools.”
Under international humanitarian law, a civilian object becomes a legitimate objective when its function provides “obvious military advantage.” Wildberries pass that test with ease—unlike Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian apartment buildings, shopping centers and fertility clinics. Russian military bloggers have been vocal about Wildberries’ importance to front-line troops, posting screenshots of some of the most sought-after items, such as first-person view drones and spare parts. It seems that the company expected to be a target: Shortly before the first strike at its warehouses, Wildberries. ago its terms and conditions to add drone and missile attacks to its force majeure clause, eliminating the liability platform for damaged stock.
There isn’t a single statistic to show how much the Russian military relies on private transportation and crowdfunding, but there are hints. My own research over the past few days found nearly 1,000 Wildberries listings that met the strict definition of military equipment with no civilian use, such as body armor plates, combat helmets, drone equipment, drone detectors, and electronic warfare systems. The other 4,500 ads fit into the broad category of two uses: Products like night vision devices, recreation, power banks, and cold-weather equipment have normal civilian purposes, but the needs on the platform are war-driven. Hundreds of Telegram channels are raising money for the military: A review of 30 such channels turned up more than 18,000 posts linking directly to product pages on Wildberries and its competitor Ozon over the past two years. Some purchase requests were so specific that they included the military unit’s call sign.
The Russian government acknowledges this state of affairs but spins it as a core competency rather than a problem with defense procurement. In December 2024, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said more than 65 self-built drone systems and electronic warfare systems have been developed. in the hands for the armed forces since that April, as well as more than 100,000 personal items purchased from small civilian manufacturers and design shops. Russian President Vladimir Putin to be praised civilian investigators putting together military equipment outside the official Ministry of Defense procurement chain. These efforts rely heavily on the type of consumer supply chain infrastructure Wildberries provides: searchable product catalogs, standardized fulfillment, same-day delivery, and a customer review system that functions, inadvertently, like a real-time test report from the military.
That is what makes the warehouse strike military. Russia’s official transport system, according to US Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges and other Western observers. have noted since the start of the war, it has never reliably provided its soldiers with basic things like thermal imaging, generators, or quality displays, a gap that volunteers and crowdfunders have spent four years filling. Disrupt the system that aggregates and dispenses with such informal distribution, and the damage will not be limited to the company, its warehouse workers and the small business vendors who lose their stock.
In addition to their impact on the military supply chain, attacks on Wildberries have also brought the war home to the Russians in a way that is far greater than the oil refinery attacks they have caused. fuel shortage across the country. Tens of millions of ordinary Russians rely on Wildberries for delivery; millions of them earn part or all of their livelihood as marketers on the platform. Russian social media channels are filled with videos of sellers expressing their anger and frustration over their burnt stock and loss of life. Most of them seem genuinely shocked, unable to connect their fate with their country’s war against its neighbor—an invasion many of them were cheering for. Like the oil shortage, the disruption of the Wildberries brings the effects of the war within the Russian middle class.
Unlike the attack on the Ukrainian oil refinery, Putin has failed to protect his main customers: the residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg, who has tried to isolate them from the war. Gasoline can be transferred from distant regions to keep the two main cities of Russia supplied; latest maps availability of fuel and a Reuters reports show that this is actually happening, with the regions bearing the burden of the shortage. Warehouse fires do not spare sellers depending on where they live, and a broken logistics system hits everyone. Infrastructure that maintains fast delivery across 11 time zones simply cannot be re-analyzed. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Putin to maintain the illusion of normalcy.
Beyond the effects of the military supply chain, the damage is real: By July 22, after just the first few attacks, Ukraine was ready. knocked out an average of 8 percent of Wildberries’ total equipment capacity; physical damage to warehouses alone was estimated to be around 400 million dollars. Retailers’ losses from damaged inventory could reach another 2 billion dollars, less of which retailers can recover. The sheer size of the company will have other negative effects on the Russian economy, including damage to the banks holding its huge debt.
The Russian government’s response to the attacks was also predictable. Government media easily ignore them. On July 24, the police in Krasnodar detention a 19-year-old woman for simply posting a video of the aftermath of the strike at the city’s Wildberries station. Meanwhile, the Kremlin is reported consider government support for the company, possibly involving banks that have already been stressed by the government.
The commander of Ukraine’s drone force, Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, has been open about the strategy. Wildberries blow, He saidin part they were intended as psychological operations aimed at disrupting what he called the “comfortable peacetime illusion” that the Russians have been allowed to maintain even when their military is fighting a brutal war next door. Putin built his domestic business with ordinary Russians on the promise that the war would not touch them directly. Wildberries, however, is an app on every Russian’s phone, making the battle difficult to ignore. That, more than any cache or lost shipment of body armor, is what Ukraine understood when it chose this target. After four years of Kremlin messages about war changing nothing for Russians, the war has come home.
