27.08.2026 18:15

Ukrainian drones targeted Wildberries’ warehouse complexes for a reason — they are among the channels used to circumvent sanctions and restrictions.

On the night of August 26, Ukrainian drones attacked the Wildberries logistics center in Kotovsk, Tambov region, for the second time. Overall, Ukraine’s Defense Forces have carried out more than 30 strikes on warehouses belonging to Russia’s online retail giant Wildberries. Why have these logistics hubs come under attack? Because Wildberries ceased long ago to be merely an online shopping platform — it has evolved into a powerful logistics and financial hub that directly supports the Kremlin’s war machine.

The Center for Strategic Communications has examined how the marketplace contributes to Russia’s war against Ukraine, the losses it has already sustained, and why strikes on Wildberries warehouses are not simply attacks on a private business, but rather a blow to the “gray” import of dual-use goods, military logistics, and Russia’s financial resilience.

SCALE AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE STRIKES

In just one month — from July 18 to August 18, 2026 — Wildberries’ warehouse infrastructure came under an unprecedented barrage of aerial attacks. During this period, 32 confirmed strikes were recorded across 19 Russian regions, from the border regions and the Moscow region to the Urals and the Volga region, as well as in temporarily occupied Crimea.

The farthest strike hit Zamulyanka in Perm Krai — some 1,400 km from the border. At the same time, the network’s main “arteries” sustained critical damage:

Superhubs completely or partially destroyed: Elektrostal, Kotovsk, Novosemeykino, and Russia’s largest distribution hub in Koledino (more than 200,000 sq. m). Fires and structural damage put hundreds of thousands of square meters of warehouse space out of operation.

Facilities damaged: Krasnodar, Nevinnomyssk, Chekhov, Aleksin, Nizhny Novgorod, as well as warehouses in the Vladimir and Penza regions.

Interim results of the operation (July–August 2026):

Scale: 32 facilities across 19 Russian regions and temporarily occupied Crimea. The documented area affected by fires and destruction at Wildberries warehouses exceeds 740,000–780,000 square meters.

Massive losses: The first wave of strikes on the Elektrostal and Kotovsk hubs alone destroyed goods estimated to be worth 150–235 billion rubles.

System paralysis: The flow of goods across Central Russia came to a complete standstill. A state of emergency was declared in some regions, while the company froze the acceptance of new shipments and waived storage fees.

The destruction of the hubs dealt a severe blow to supply chains. It made one thing clear: the enemy’s deep rear is no longer a safe zone — either for civilian businesses or for sustaining the Kremlin’s war machine.

HOW WILDBERRIES BECAME PART OF RUSSIA’S WAR MACHINE

For a long time, Wildberries was portrayed by Russian propaganda as a quintessential self-made business success story. Founded in 2004 by married couple Tatyana and Vladislav Bakalchuk as a service for reselling clothing from German catalogs, the platform quickly grew into a retail giant and de facto monopoly. By 2012, the company had overtaken Ozon in website traffic, and by the end of the decade it had become a universal retailer, with turnover reaching 223.5 billion rubles in 2019. The Bakalchuk family’s wealth exceeded $13 billion, while Tatyana Kim (Bakalchuk) gradually moved into Kremlin-adjacent circles — eventually becoming a member of the central headquarters of the pro-Putin All-Russia People’s Front and the advisory council of Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Yet behind the civilian façade of the “Russian Amazon” was a systematic transformation of the commercial platform into an integrated component of the Kremlin regime. In 2024, Wildberries entered into a highly revealing merger with Russ, Russia’s largest outdoor advertising operator, in a deal publicly backed by Putin. Control of the company effectively passed to entities linked to sanctioned oligarch Suleiman Kerimov and individuals within the Russian presidential administration. It amounted to a kind of “protection fee” and ultimately brought the retailer under tight state control.

A LOGISTICS HUB FOR “GOODS FOR THE SMO”

Ukrainian drones targeted Wildberries’ warehouse complexes for a reason. The marketplace has become a key channel for parallel imports and gray-market supplies to the Russian military. High-tech dual-use components were sold through the platform on an industrial scale, including parts for assembling and repairing strike and reconnaissance UAVs, tactical radios, signal amplifiers, and specialized fiber-optic cable spools for FPV drones designed to operate despite electronic warfare systems.

For a long time, the marketplace’s website openly featured a dedicated “Everything for the SMO” section and tag, offering more than 200,000 military-related products. Even after the systematic strikes in July, when the company’s management removed the tag from the website, the military goods themselves did not disappear. The destroyed warehouse complexes served as actual stockpiling hubs, storing thousands of pieces of military equipment destined for the front.

WILDBERRIES’ FINANCIAL ALLIANCE WITH VTB BANK

The transformation of Wildberries into a military-civilian conglomerate was completed on the financial front. State-owned VTB Group — one of the main pillars of Putin’s regime and a key source of financing for Russia’s defense industry — planned in May to acquire part of the digital financial assets of the merged RWB (Wildberries & Russ) company, as well as a 5% stake in WB Bank.

The alliance brought together the state bank’s infrastructure with the reach of the digital platform. Small and medium-sized businesses supplying goods for the war gained direct access to VTB’s preferential corporate banking products through the marketplace’s services. In effect, civilian retail became fully integrated with a banking system that directly supports Russia’s war of aggression.

The systematic strikes on Wildberries warehouses represent high-precision economic and logistical strikes against a structure that has taken on the task of supplying the Russian army with weapons components, electronics, and preferential financing. Destroying this network deprives the enemy of critically important flexibility in supplying the technologies needed to wage war.

Amid the total mobilization of the Russian economy, Wildberries has de facto become a full-fledged military-logistics facility — a centralized hub for supplying drones, components, and equipment to the Russian army. Because of this role, its hubs have become legitimate and critically important targets for Ukrainian strikes. The destruction of the conglomerate’s warehouse capacity has disrupted the enemy’s military supply system.

The campaign is part of a broader strategy to erode Russia’s military and economic potential. Combined with fuel shortages caused by attacks on oil refineries, the destruction of key rear-area nodes supporting the enemy army deprives Russia of the financial and logistical flexibility it needs. Every destroyed hub makes it increasingly costly for the Kremlin to sustain both its war machine and domestic economic stability, gradually narrowing its ability to pay for the continuation of its aggression against Ukraine.

Center for Strategic Communications

(C)UKRINFORM 2026