Not many people may have heard of Wildberries in the West.
But the company is huge in Russia.
The online retailer, set up in 2004 by entrepreneur Tatyana Kim, accounts for about one-third of Russia’s e-commerce market.
It is a sector that accounts for just over 8% of the country’s GDP, which is similar to some big European economies.
Ms Kim’s company is estimated to be worth more than €7bn and she is Russia’s wealthiest woman.
Stories of her setting up the firm from her apartment near Moscow have led to comparisons with Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos, who set up his firm from his garage in mid-90s Seattle.
In 2025, Wildberries increased its turnover in Russia and other countries (it also operates in a number of former Soviet republics) by almost 50% compared to the previous year, according to reporting by Interfax, a Russian news agency.
This year is unlikely to be as profitable for the firm.
Since 18 July, at least 20 of the company’s warehouses, mostly across southern and western Russia, have been struck by Ukrainian drones.
Those strikes have sparked fires and destroyed large quantities of stock held at the warehouses.
An examination of satellite imagery by Reuters this week found that at least 1.18 million square metres of Wildberries warehouse space, equivalent to one-fifth of the company’s storage capacity has either been damaged or destroyed.
Eight people have been killed at two Wildberries sites, according to Russian authorities.
Another five people were reported to have been killed by a drone strike on an unnamed warehouse near Moscow this week.
Wildberries sells clothes, home furniture and just about everything else that you would expect to find on the website of an e-commerce business. Again, think of Amazon.
But it also sells small commercial drones, night-vision goggles and various types of military clothing such as protective body armour.
Ukraine says that it is targeting Wildberries logistics hubs because the company supplies key equipment to Russia’s armed forces, including sanctioned components for drone production.
A quick search for a DJI Mavic 3, a consumer drone that is widely used by both Russian and Ukrainian forces on the frontlines for reconnaissance, shows it can be purchased on the site for about €2,500 (244,000 roubles).
The main goal of the strikes, said Oleksandr Kraiev, a Ukrainian foreign policy expert, is to prohibit Russian businesses and the Russian government from “acquiring sanctioned goods that are still flowing through these e-commerce operations”.
“It is just putting more pressure on the Russian economy in order to make it unsustainable and to make Russian military operations unsustainable, and to create a situation where negotiations are the only option for Russians,” Mr Kraiev from Ukrainian Prism, a Kyiv-based thinktank, said.
Ms Kim has called Ukrainian strikes on her business “acts of terrorism” while the Kremlin accuses Kyiv of attacking Russia’s civilian economy, which smacks of complete hypocrisy. Russian forces have been bombing Ukrainian cities for the past four and a half years, destroying businesses and civilian infrastructure in the process, despite the Kremlin’s insistence that it does not target civilian areas.
Wildberries has not commented on the cost of the drone strikes on its operations, but it is likely to be substantial, not only in terms of destroyed goods and infrastructure but also in terms of lost online sales.
Reports of destroyed stock and delayed orders are likely to influence regular Wildberries customers to buy from the company’s rivals until the attacks on the warehouses subside.
One estimate by a Russian analytical firm, shared with Forbes Russia, puts the losses of online retailers selling on Wildberries between €2.2bn and €3bn (215bn to 280bn roubles).
If the estimates of damage caused to Wildberries warehouses and stock are anywhere close to being correct, then Ukrainian drone strikes are making an oversized dent in Russia’s GDP compared to what it is costing to mount such operations. (One of Ukraine’s main long-range drones, the FP-1, costs at most €60,000 per unit to produce).
Ukraine’s strategy of targeting Wildberries and other industrial zones outside Russian cities works alongside its ongoing strikes on Russian oil depots and refineries, which Kyiv has stepped up since May.
Strikes on oil depots made people queue for hours earlier this month to buy petrol and those attacks continue to weaken Russia’s oil export revenues.
Disrupting the supply chain of Russia’s e-commerce market has meant lost revenue for sellers and delayed orders for consumers. All of this sows frustration among the populace.
“I don’t see any clear reason for Ukraine to stop such strikes,” Mr Kraiev said.
“The idea is not only to drain the Russian economy out of resources, but we can also use it as a negotiating tool on our side.”
Ukraine’s strategy of targeting key components of the Russian economy appears to have been a confluence of factors: the success of Ukraine’s secret service (SBU) in striking Russian strategic bases deep within Russia during the past two years of the war, combined with former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov pushing for the expansion of long-range drone production and greater investment in deep-strike technology.
Mr Fedorov was dismissed in mid-July by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after a spat between him and the former chief of the armed forces, but Kyiv’s long-range strategy continues.
There may be a clear reason for that.
Late last month, Ukrainian and US officials were reported to have discussed the idea of an air ceasefire to get the stalled peace initiative back up and running.
If Kyiv continues to disrupt and drain the Russian economy with the kind of drone strikes it uses to target Wildberries, then Moscow may just eventually have to consider the air ceasefire proposal.
That is what Kyiv is banking on.
The strikes on Wildberries bring the war home to ordinary Russians by disrupting the rhythm of their country’s economy.
But Kyiv’s ultimate goal in targeting the e-commerce giant, just like Russia’s oil sector, is to gain leverage in the negotiating process, whenever it restarts.
