Have you ever wondered how much it costs to buy a drone, body armour, a combat helmet, a body bag or an AK assault rifle magazine in Russia? Not on the dark web, but on the open internet. To buy these items on Wildberries – the Russian answer to Amazon – would cost you (in order) as little as the equivalent of £41.95, £220, £90, £6.10 and a cheap and cheerful £5.50.
It’s for this reason that the online retailer, owned by Russia’s richest woman Tatiana Kim, has become the latest target for Ukraine in its effort to fend off Russia’s invasion. Starting on 18 July, the Ukrainian army has begun sending drones into the country to attack warehouses and logistics centres belonging to Wildberries on a near-nightly basis.
So far, Ukraine has successfully struck 21 Wildberries warehouses across Russia. The first to be targetted was based in Elektrostal, just 37 miles from Moscow. Since then, drones have penetrated deeper into the country, reaching as far east as a facility in Yekaterinburg (880 miles from Moscow and over 1,000 miles from the border with Ukraine), as far north as the outskirts of St Petersburg and as far south as Stavropol, close to the border with Georgia. At least nine people are thought to have been killed in the attacks and more than 110 injured.
This shows how easy it is for someone in Russia to kit themselves out for combat via mail order
The damage to Wildberries has been profound. To date, researchers estimate that the company has lost approximately a fifth of its national storage capacity as a result. The effect on the businesses selling through Wildberries has also clearly been devastating: the company accounts for over 50 per cent of all online retail orders in Russia, with sellers on the platform believed to have lost well over 215 billion roubles’ (£2 billion) worth of stock in the past 19 days.
The official reason why Ukraine is targeting the Wildberries warehouses relates to the role the company has come to play in Russia’s war effort. Referencing the first spate of strikes, but without naming Wildberries directly, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that such warehouses and logistics centres ‘supply sanctioned components for the production of drones and navigation equipment’ sent to the front.
Zelensky is not wrong. While Wildberries holds no official contracts with the Russian army or Ministry of Defence, the retail platform has been a clear beneficiary of Russia’s wartime economy. Since the summer of 2022, a growing number of social media crowdfunding campaigns have used Wildberries to buy a variety of goods for the army.
The range of products available, and being sold to Russian soldiers, through Wildberries is astounding. Alongside the items mentioned at the top of this piece, a cursory search of the website lists an extensive catalogue of dual-use military/civilian items all available for purchase. Until the drone attacks began, the website reportedly even had an edit of products listed that compiled ‘everything for the SVO [special military operation – the state-sanctioned term for the war in Ukraine]’.
According to the independent news outlet Meduza, medical products make up the bulk of what is being bought for soldiers through Wildberries. This includes first aid kits, tourniquets and other medical equipment such as bandages and scissors. But over the past four years, donations have also been collected for 3D printers, chainsaws, soldering irons, shovels and even spare tyres. Many crowdfunding requests have also been made for care packages that include home comforts, such as instant mashed potatoes, chocolate bars, coffee and even religious icons.
Despite the bloody chaos of the Russian frontline, it appears remarkably straightforward to get Wildberries deliveries to the soldiers fighting along it. The crowdfunding requests for products appear to mainly come from self-styled local ‘humanitarian missions’, who instruct those donating to send the details of their purchases to a specific phone number. Purchased items, meanwhile, are sent to Wildberries pickup points across Russia and the occupied Ukrainian territories, including Donetsk, Mariupol and Crimea. They are then collected and distributed.
This phenomenon demonstrates just how easy it is for someone in Russia to kit themselves out for combat via mail order. But it also provides a grim insight into just how poorly the soldiers being sent into the meat grinder by the Kremlin are being equipped. Nevertheless, some have questioned whether the volume of Wildberries products supplying Russian soldiers is sufficient for the Ukrainians to consider the company’s warehouses legitimate military targets, as per the definition set out by the Geneva Convention.
The other reason Ukraine is targeting Wildberries, however, is the effect they believe it’s having on the Russian population. Bombing such huge warehouses across the country – with huge, stinking plumes of smoke and fires that take hours, if not days, to extinguish – has brought the reality of Putin’s invasion home to ordinary Russians in yet another way. Hundreds of thousands of sole traders and small businesses who use the platform to sell their products have had their stock – and, for some, their livelihoods – destroyed. Alongside this year’s tax hikes, galloping oil prices and barely-controlled inflation, this will ratchet up the economic pressure on many households.
With Wildberries already reportedly saddled with high levels of debt, the company has reportedly paid out just 40 million roubles (£370,000) in compensation to affected sellers. Some have even speculated that, should the company find itself unable to service its debts to Russian banks, it might trigger a bigger financial crisis in the country. This combination of social and economic pressure just might trickle through into more pressure on the Kremlin, so the thinking goes.
Having achieved such success so far, there is little indication that Ukraine will cease its attacks on Wildberries any time soon. Helpfully for Kyiv, the company has a complete map of all its warehouses that is easily accessible on its website. Too costly to relocate and impossible to hide, it seems that the rest of Wildberries’ vast network of warehouses are sitting ducks for future strikes. For Ukraine, the fun hasn’t stopped yet.
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