(MOSCOW) – A wave of drone strikes against Wildberries logistics hubs across Russia has triggered a crisis of confidence in the country’s warehousing and fulfilment sector, with retailers scrambling to withdraw inventory from multiple shipping companies.
Satellite imagery confirms that three of five Wildberries warehouses targeted in recent weeks have been completely destroyed, eliminating roughly 75 per cent of the firm’s storage capacity at those sites. The attacks struck facilities in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Krasnodar, Yekaterinburg, and Simferopol in occupied Crimea.
Footage from the Moscow site showed purple-tinged water, mockingly dubbed “wild berry juice” online, pouring from the wreckage as firefighters battled the blaze. The primary damage is compounded by a secondary financial shock spreading across the Russian e-commerce industry.
Retailers who use third-party logistics are now withdrawing stock en masse, even from companies not hit by the strikes. Video evidence showed the United Warehouse Company in Moscow, a separate entity, losing clients as panic and paranoia grip the market. The anxiety means the monetary damage is extending far beyond the burnt shells of Wildberries depots, threatening the viability of shipping and inventory services nationwide.
Compounding the chaos, Wildberries itself is refusing to release inventory to retailers who fear their goods will be incinerated in the next attack. Sellers report that the company is effectively holding their products hostage, aware that a mass exodus of inventory would trigger immediate bankruptcy.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov addressed the destruction by stating citizens can “buy exactly the same goods without any problems at ordinary department stores.” The dismissive tone has done little to calm business owners watching their stock go up in flames.
Wildberries owner Tatiana Kim responded to the strikes on her Telegram channel by writing a genocidal rant threatening to “burn their cities” and “kill every man,” exposing the visceral hatred that contradicts official narratives of victimhood.
Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska warned that Wildberries owes billions of dollars to Russian banks. He cautioned that if the company collapses, it will drag the entire banking system down with it. “If you owe a bank 1 million, that’s your problem. But if you owe 1 billion, that’s the bank’s problem,” Deripaska said, adding that depositors are “all adults and will go figure out what to do.”
In Yekaterinburg, a warehouse worker interviewed after drones struck the car park expressed disappointment not in Ukraine, but in the Russian federal authorities. “What difference does it make what the regional do? The feds are what matters,” he said, revealing cracks in the propaganda shield the Kremlin relies upon to direct public anger outward.
The attacks have sparked online hysteria, with a woman’s widely shared video noting that millions of displaced Ukrainians and thousands of killed children did not move Russians, “but lost inventories did. That’s where your outrage begins. Pathetic. Welcome to cause and effect.”
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