All across Russia, Ukraine’s armed forces have been – piece by piece and one drone strike at a time – destroying the infrastructure of Wildberries. The company is Russia’s largest online shopping platform.
At the end of July and into the beginning of August, an increasing number of the company’s important facilities have been targeted by drone attacks. As of 3 August, 12 of the online retailer’s 15 largest warehouses in different regions had been hit. Seven of them have not yet resumed operations.
Putin in 2023. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Putin in 2022. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
It is estimated that Wildberries may have lost at least 15 percent of its storage capacity, amounting to about 860,000 square meters of warehouse space.
Over this weekend, Ukraine has begun widening the war on Russia’s e-commerce industry.
Three logistics centers belonging to the other Russian online shopping giant, Ozon, were hit over three nights. Several other sites, including some in occupied Crimea, were also struck, according to monitoring channels that reported on 24 August.
Ozon is the next-largest of the Russian “Amazon analogues” in Russia. This company is smaller than Wildberries, but it still controls 32 percent of this e-commerce market. Another facility belonging to Russian home goods retailer Kuchenland (a German name that means “Kitchenland”) in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar was set ablaze amid the Ukrainian attack, according to the independent Russian Telegram channel Astra.
Two children were killed, with seven other children and two adults injured in a childcare center, reportedly as a result of fallen drone debris, Krasnodar Krai Governor Veniamin Kondratyev announced after the attack.
“Additionally, debris from drones fell on residential buildings and apartment buildings under construction. The impact of the drones caused a fire in warehouse facilities,” he added.
Striking Deep
Krasnodar is located near Russia’s Black Sea coast and is about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from southeastern Ukraine, near the occupied city of Berdyansk, and 365 kilometers (225 miles) from Ukrainian-controlled territory near Orykhiv. At nearly the same time, near the village of Enem in the Adygea Republic, a logistics center belonging to Russian online retail giant Ozon was attacked, Exile Plus reported.
Another Ozon logistics hub in the city of Nevinnomyssk, Stavropol Krai, was set on fire after being struck by Ukrainian forces, according to the Telegram channel Exilenova Plus, which frequently reports on incidents in the war. The Stavropol Krai Governor Vladimir Vladimirov confirmed that Ukrainian drones had attacked the city of Nevinnomyssk’s industrial area, but without calling out which specific sites were targeted.
“Our air defense forces are repelling an attack by enemy drones targeting the industrial zone of Nevinnomyssk. Some drones have been shot down,” he said. A third Ozon facility was also entirely in flames after being hit in the town of Tyube in the Dagestan Republic, again, according to the Exilenova Plus channel.
In occupied Crimea, a fire broke out at the site of a radar tracking unit following four strikes by Ukrainian drones, as was reported by the pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel Crimean Wind.
Reports on all these strikes have noted that they are occurring during the run-up to the 24 August holiday,, when Ukraine celebrates 35 years of independence after declaring independence from the former Soviet Union.
There is More Than One Target
After the initial attacks on Wildberries in late July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on his social media sites that these warehouses had functioned as “logistics centers that participate in supplying the Russian military with drone components, navigation devices and equipment.”
But there are other secondary effects to these attacks. Ukraine presidential advisor Mykhailo Podoliak told European media outlets that disrupting the supply of these military items to the front was only one of the goals of these attacks on the largest Russian online trading platform, but that there were other objectives. Striking deep inside Russia to frighten elites and local inhabitants, as well as deeply affecting the ability of ordinary people to carry out their daily lives.
Damaging “a company with a turnover of 6,2 trillion roubles (about 67 billion euros),” according to Podoliak, would also hit the company’s major creditors. These include the largest banks such as Sberbank, VTB, and Alfa Bank. This could lead to a “dramatic emptying” of the state budget, he continued.
The effects are felt within the population at large as well.
If an Amazon warehouse burns down in a US city, it does not destroy locals’ ability to meet their daily shopping needs.
There are Costco, Best Buy, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target, etc. nearby – there are many options.
In Russia, those other options do not exist – making the systematic elimination of these e-commerce facilities an act of turning these Russian cities into online-shopping “deserts.”
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
