Wildberries: Its Role in the Economy, a Chronology of the Warehouse Strikes, and Their Consequences

On the night of July 18, the campaign of Ukrainian strikes on Russian rear-area targets entered a new phase: the warehouse complexes of Wildberries, Russia's largest online marketplace, came under attack, and as of July 24, at least eleven strikes on the holding's assets have been confirmed. The strikes were mainly concentrated on Wildberries's large warehouse and logistics hubs: on the night of July 17–18, facilities in Kotovsk (Tambov) and Elektrostal (Moscow region) were attacked , with losses estimated by experts at 10–15% of the warehouse real estate of Wildberries & Russ (RWB); on the night of July 19–20, facilities in Koledino and Domodedovo (Moscow region) were attacked ; and on the night of July 21–22, facilities in Nevinnomyssk (Stavropol krai) and Krasnodar were attacked , with preliminary estimates putting the damage at about 5% of the holding's entire warehouse infrastructure. On July 23, drones struck the company's warehouses in Voronezh , and on the night of July 23–24, in occupied Simferopol, Tver, St. Petersburg, and Leningrad region.

Wildberries is a systemically important element of Russian retail and logistics: for 2025, the company’s turnover totaled 6.1 trillion rubles ($73.3 billion), with net profit of about 175 billion rubles ($2.1 billion) (10). By EK Stratcom calculations, the holding’s turnover amounts to about 2.8% of Russian GDP, and it accounts for about 53% of all e-commerce in Russia.

Although, according to official registries, the company’s sole 100% owner is its founder, Tatyana Kim, the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, which is close to the security bloc, names (11) as co-owners the head of the PA, Anton Vaino, and First Deputy Head of the PA, Alexei Gromov, who oversees domestic propaganda.

State involvement is also confirmed by the Nezygar Telegram channel, which is close to the PA:

“WB’s status is hybrid in nature — the company remains private, but it is at the same time partially controlled by state and influential quasi-state structures.” (12)

Wildberries’s losses are substantial: the consequences of the July 17–18 strikes are estimated by experts at a minimum of 150 billion rubles (13) ($1.9 billion), and those of the July 21–22 strikes at 100–120 billion rubles (14) ($1.3–1.5 billion). Officials state that the strike on the Kotovsk warehouse killed seven people (15), while Nezygar claims (16) that the real figures are being concealed and that the actual toll is far higher, at no fewer than 55.

Volodymyr Zelensky identified (17) the formal reason for the strikes as the use of these facilities “to supply sanctioned components for the production of drones and navigation equipment,” to which Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov responded that “Wildberries’s warehouses are not used to supply goods for the Russian army’s needs; Kyiv continues to attack civilian targets” (18), which is yet another example of direct Kremlin falsehood (19). At the same time, he acknowledged that “the situation at Wildberries, as well as for small and medium-sized businesses, is difficult following the Ukrainian armed forces’ attack on the company’s warehouses” (20).

According to the Kremlin's Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) data, the strikes on the company's facilities drew the attention of 14% of Russians between July 17 and 19, ranking as a concern just behind gasoline shortages and rising fuel prices, and against this backdrop there are clear signs of a new wave of discontent, particularly among small and medium-sized businesses.

Social media is seeing an active stream (21) of videos from entrepreneurs who went bankrupt overnight, criticizing both the authorities and the company: compensation for businesses is optional (22), the company has announced technical support measures through its subsidiary bank (23), and shortly before the strikes, Wildberries revised its seller agreement, disclaiming responsibility for loss of or damage to goods resulting from drone attacks (24).

Against the backdrop of a broader cooling of the Russian economy and a tightening of fiscal policy that took effect at the start of this year, the consequences of the strikes could prove fatal for small and medium-sized businesses. In the first half of 2026, the deteriorating business climate already produced the sharpest drop in newly registered enterprises since 2010: 66,700 new commercial enterprises were registered against 118,700 that ceased operations (25).

“By the end of the year, the gap will most likely become even more significant,” (26)

the Nezygar channel notes.

Against this backdrop, discontent with the authorities is rising even according to data from the Kremlin’s Public Opinion Foundation (FOM): the share of respondents who had heard critical statements about the authorities in the past month rose by 12 p.p. over the first half of the year, from 27% to 39% (27), and the shares of those who believe their financial situation will improve versus worsen matched each other for the first time since 2016, at 22% each (28).

According to VTsIOM, the gap between positive and negative assessments of the authorities’ economic policy has been steadily widening since January 2026, when the share of negative assessments matched the share of positive ones for the first time since the start of the war; in June 2026, negative assessments stood at 42% and positive at 24% (29).

In addition, June 2026 saw a historic high in the share of respondents who view the authorities’ foreign policy negatively, at 31% — the highest level ever recorded in the entire history of this VTsIOM survey, which has tracked this indicator since 2007 (30).

Positive assessments of foreign policy, meanwhile, fell to their lowest level since the second half of 2011, at 40%.

The Response of Officials and Propaganda: Kyiv’s “Terrorist Attacks” and Destabilization Attempts

In covering the strikes on Wildberries’s warehouses, Russian officials employed three traditional narratives that had already been used to explain the strikes on oil and gas facilities: “Ukraine as a terrorist state,” “strikes aimed at destabilizing the situation inside the country,” and “the situation is normal.”

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, stated on July 21 that “the Kyiv regime continues, in fact, to strike civilian targets, and this is the terrorist essence of the Kyiv regime” (31), and the Investigative Committee opened criminal cases on charges of terrorism (32).

The same line was echoed by Grigory Karasin, chairman of the Federation Council’s Committee on International Affairs:

“It is clear that these scoundrels are deliberately striking socially important facilities with drones in an effort to sow confusion among our population. This is the real essence of modern Nazism — to split society and instill in it a sense of instability.” (33)

This same narrative was contained in a briefing memo that, according to independent journalists (34), the PA sent to state propaganda outlets: the document states that

“The main goal of these attacks is to demoralize the population and try to turn their anxiety against the country’s leadership and our army. Anxiety does not reduce but rather increases the likelihood of the conflict dragging on: the enemy judges the effectiveness of its strikes by it.”

The document proposes calling the strikes themselves “PR attacks aimed at inflicting damage on Russian small business.”

At the same time, to divert readers’ and viewers’ attention from the attacks, propaganda outlets are advised to emphasize that “Vladimir Putin has practically cut Ukraine off from the sea,” and to highlight the Russian army’s strikes on Ukrainian cities.

This is exactly what played out on Russian television: while on July 18 and on the afternoon of 19 the country’s three largest national television channels (Channel One, Rossiya 1, and NTV) were still running segments on the strikes on Wildberries’s warehouses, by the Sunday evening news wrap-ups on July 19 these segments had almost disappeared: Channel One limited itself to a brief 30-second report on the attack (35), Rossiya 1 ignored the topic entirely (36), and NTV ran a segment on the condition of those injured in the strikes (37).

Coverage of the subsequent attacks on July 22 focused on the support measures the company had taken to contain growing discontent: on July 22, Channel One’s evening news broadcast featured Wildberries head Tatyana Kim twice (38), (39), speaking about compensation packages, while NTV repeated the “terrorist attacks” narrative, accompanying it with footage of a “campaign of popular support for the affected businesses” (40).

The Kremlin’s leading propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, reproduced these same narratives on his channel, emphasizing that the situation is normal (41) and the company’s help for affected entrepreneurs (42), while referring to Tatyana Kim as “Mrs. Bakalchuk” (43), thereby recalling the 2024 intra-elite conflict (44), in which Wildberries’s merger with Russ Outdoor, owned by the Mirzoyan brothers, led to a sharp confrontation between Senator Suleiman Kerimov — a business partner of the Mirzoyans who was backed by PA head Anton Vaino — and Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, who took the side of Kim’s former husband and company co-owner, Vladislav Bakalchuk.

The conflict was so intense that it escalated into a shootout at Wildberries’s Moscow office in September 2024.In the same segment, Solovyov also called for private companies to create their own air defenses, thereby shifting responsibility for security from the state to business.

The overall propaganda frame is clearly evident in the words of Vladimir Solovyov, delivered in his traditional Kremlin-coordinated monologue at the start of the television program Evening with Vladimir Solovyov on July 19 (45):

“We are now facing a new war: everyone understands this. For us this is a rather difficult war, because there was a moment, in 2022, when it suddenly became clear that the doctrine wasn’t working and we are moving from small-scale operations to a full-scale war. <...> The enemy is trying to destabilize the situation inside the country. This is precisely the purpose behind the strikes on civilian infrastructure, this was the purpose behind the strike on the oil and gas complex, and this is why they are hitting transport infrastructure. <...> The strike on Wildberries is no accident. I just want to understand for myself: first, is it a coincidence that the company changed its contract terms shortly before this, and then the strike happened, and a large number of people ended up in an extremely difficult position because they can no longer get insurance? And second, didn’t they report back in 2025 that they had built a unique fire-suppression system? I understand everything, I understand when something gets hit, but there are presumably some storage regulations, <...> presumably people calculated the risks? I’m not even saying this now to punish anyone, but rather to say that all our civilian facilities should be reviewed for new threats. But at the same time, this cannot be shifted onto the shoulders of business. Business is already in such a state that much of it is on its last legs.”

The Z-Community: Criticism of the Air Defense System and the Centralization of the Russian Economy

The pro-war Z-community actively discussed the strikes on Wildberries’s warehouse complexes. Criticism of the air defense system and of process management became a central theme: pro-war Z-community analyst Yuri Kotenok wrote that:

“This is a war, and the enemy is trying to destroy any acceptable and significant target on Russian territory. Any target! From oil refineries and airfields to military units, fuel depots, transport and logistics facilities, and much more. <...> Air defense doesn’t just need modernization. Air defense requires radical strengthening. The safety of millions depends on our air defense.” (46)

Another pro-war blogger, Yuri Podolyaka, supported this line by reposting Solovyov’s monologue with the comment “In my view, a very sensible proposal...” (47).

Z-blogger Roman Alyokhin, designated a “foreign agent” for his criticism of the authorities, stated on July 22:

“WB is finished. The Ukrainian armed forces have already inflicted extraordinary damage and will most likely finish the job. <...> Maybe it will finally dawn on those in charge that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. These are financial and political risks.” (48)

Criticism of the leadership was also voiced by ultra-pro-war blogger Yulia Kashevarova:

“Those who are still comatose while holding serious positions, who cannot take responsibility, who sit idle and get in the way of those actually working, whether in government, at the front, or on the home front — to wrest this Victory from the West.” (49)

Almost all Z-community channels clearly highlighted the vulnerabilities of the Russian economy in the context of the intensifying strikes. VChK-OGPU, close to the security bloc, identified “centralized logistics infrastructure” as the central vulnerability (50), and described the key result of the strikes as:

“The collapse of the notion of a warehouse as a nearly risk-free rental asset. <...> As a result, the strike hits a physical facility, but the financial shockwave passes through the entire model of collective ownership of Russian commercial real estate.” (51)

Roman Alyokhin, for his part, stated that:

“The strike is meant to trigger a chain of our own mistaken decisions, so that the company, frightened by the next attack, halts operations on its own, and the state responds by scrambling to ban or centralize something. <...> Our biggest problems aren’t about signage [a reference to Russia’s new mandatory-Russian-signage law], or a shortage of engineers or doctors, but about mistakes in strategy and operational management... That’s where mobilization is needed, and that’s where new resources need to go.” (52)

Yuri Podolyaka, who later deleted his post, also highlighted the problem of monopolies in the Russian economy:

“The strike has very clearly exposed a long-standing problem in our retail sector: the abuse of the MONOPOLY POSITION of marketplaces such as Wildberries or Ozon.” (53)

A number of other channels assessed the strikes within the framework of tactical confrontation with the Ukrainian armed forces. Two Majors, close to the security bloc, noted “the enemy’s extremely high level of awareness and quality intelligence and analysis. Unfortunately, an extremely efficient ratio of resources expended to results achieved” (54), predicting “an expected buildup of strikes on WB’s warehouses and those of similar companies in the near future” (55). MiG of Russia, also close to the security bloc, wrote that “unfortunately, as expected, the enemy has launched a full-fledged ‘warehouse war’” (56).

At the same time, others claimed that the strikes on warehouse complexes stemmed from Kyiv’s desperate position: “a strike ‘on some Wildberries or other’ is not a success for the enemy, but an admission of its defeat in the war against our rear areas” (57) (Podolyaka), and “against the backdrop of the Russian armed forces’ recent crushing strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, it is very important for Kyiv to create the appearance that it can respond in kind” (58) (Readovka, linked to the Ministry of Defense).

A comprehensive pro-war view of the strikes’ objectives was offered by Komsomolskaya Pravda war correspondent Alexander Kots:

“(1) The rear-area economy and destabilization from within. <...> The seller gets zero compensation — and gets angry not at Kyiv, but at the marketplace, the authorities, the neighbor. (2) Psychology. A marketplace warehouse — a symbol of peaceful life. <...> Striking it here — telling the average Russian in Tambov and Elektrostal: you have no home front. (3) Third. The visuals. Apocalyptic footage of a black column of smoke over the Moscow region, visible for dozens of kilometers. (4) Cover provided by the fake narrative about ‘military cargo.’ By this logic, any sack in any corner of the country becomes a ‘military facility,’ from the post office to the pharmacy. Convenient.” (59)

Roman Alyokhin, in effect, acknowledged the effectiveness of this approach:

“All further losses will no longer hit WB’s economics but rather the state’s domestic politics, and entrepreneurs will now be watching the authorities’ actions rather than Wildberries’s management.” (60)

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