A series of Ukrainian strikes on the warehouses of Russia’s largest online retailer has sent potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in inventory up in flames, sparking an online furor among the country’s embattled small-business owners.
Over the weekend, Ukrainian drones hit Wildberries distribution centers in Elektrostal in the Moscow region and Kotovsk in the Tambov region. A second wave of attacks early Wednesday hit logistics warehouses in the Krasnodar and Stavropol regions, while state media in the southwestern Voronezh region also reported that a drone strike forced the closure of a Wildberries warehouse there late Wednesday into Thursday.
The strikes on Wildberries, Russia’s equivalent to e-commerce giant Amazon, have brought Moscow’s war on Ukraine even closer to home by disrupting the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Russians. And they intensify a Ukrainian campaign of economic warfare that has seen wave after wave of long-range drone strikes on refineries that have caused long lines at the pump across Russia.
The attacks have also been deadly. According to regional officials, seven people were killed in Kotovsk and one was killed in Elektrostal. At least one person was killed in the latest strikes in southern Russia, according to the governor of Krasnodar region.
