This week, as part of what has been described as its largest drone attack of the year and one of the largest of the entire war, Ukraine launched hundreds of drones at Russia.
And part of that was another attack on a facility run by Wildberries, the Russian e-commerce giant. Per Euronews, Ukraine hit a 250,000-square-meter complex in Podolsk near Moscow, which is reportedly Wildberries’ largest facility.
Ukraine Artillery Strike. Creative Commons Image.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense says it has now hit about 20 Wildberries facilities, including seven of its ten largest, since the attacks started in July.
Why Wildberries?
The Associated Press published an analysis on Monday, after the latest attacks, on why the e-commerce company has become a favorite target in Ukraine in the war.
“These are not military and high-value political targets; therefore, they’re not especially secured, they’re not really built to be able to shrug off drone strikes,” Mark Galeotti, podcast host and head of the Mayak Intelligence consultancy, told the AP.
Galeotti added that other effects follow the attacks, beyond the black smoke emitting from the warehouses.
“You might be a small business whose inventory has just gone up in smoke in one of the Wildberries’ warehouses,” Galeotti told the AP. “Or else you just simply might be an ordinary consumer who just suddenly is no longer going to get the goods that you plan to buy.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, who advises Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, laid out reasons Ukraine has targeted the retailer, per the AP: “Disrupt military supplies, breed popular discontent and cause a domino effect in the Russian economy by putting stress on major banks.” Both financial institutions have a lending relationship with Wildberries, although the retailer also has its own bank.
The AP story estimated that Ukraine has knocked out about 20 percent of Wildberries’ warehouse space, with damages as serious as $6 billion.
Russia, Reuters reported in late July, is looking for ways to provide support to Wildberries, including potential support from state-supported banks.
Who is Tatyana Kim?
Over the weekend, before the latest attack on a Wildberries facility, the publication AirMail published a long profile of Tatyana Kim, the CEO of Wildberries and Russia’s wealthiest woman.
The story, titled “The Bullet-Riddled Rise of Tatyana Kim,” shares some backstory about a businesswoman who has largely kept a low profile, at least outside of Russia, until Ukraine launched a campaign in recent months to blow up her company’s facilities around the country.
AirMail reports that in the opening weeks of the campaign of strikes, Ukraine had hit 20 Wildberries facilities and knocked out 3.87 million square feet of warehouse capacity, more than 20 percent of Wildberries’ territory.
And that was before the most recent attacks.
According to the story, Kim was an English teacher with a new baby in 2004, when she launched an e-commerce website to make it easier for Russian women to buy clothes.
That company grew into Russia’s largest e-commerce concern, handling one in every two online purchases in the country, and like Amazon, it has added many different types of products over time.
Amazon is a full-on defense contractor with Pentagon deals, and Ukraine has claimed that Wildberries sells equipment to the Russian military, although the company has disputed that.
Kim is also a bit different from Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, which Wildberries is often compared to.
“A soft-spoken Asian mother of seven, she has never been to space—or even a luxury boutique,” AirMail says, adding that Kim, who does all of her shopping through Wildberries, rarely gives interviews, and that she’s been photographed so rarely that she’s sometimes been called “the Russian Banksy.”
In addition, Wildberries’ business model is a bit different from that of Amazon- the company “doesn’t sell anything of its own,” and instead works with a network of 100,000 “franchised pick-up points.”
The AirMail story also shares an odd detail from the company’s origin: Kim and her then-husband, Vladislav Bakalchuk, once ran the company.
In 2024, the company merged with Russ, a Kremlin-backed billboard company.
The couple soon fell out, with Bakalchuk allying with Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov.
After the divorce, Bakalchuk and Kadyrov’s private army “descended on Wildberries headquarters,” leading to gunfire and the deaths of two guards.
Kim, however, emerged from the incident with strong ties to the Kremlin and is now seen as one of Russia’s most powerful women. At least, until that power was tested when the drone attacks began.
About the Author: Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, national security, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
