Ukrainian drones have hit several retail warehouses belonging to Russia’s biggest online retailer, Wildberries, in a matter of days, dealing a blow to a large number of small and medium-sized businesses.
After months of drone attacks on oil depots and refineries, Kyiv says it is now targeting logistics hubs used by Russians to buy military equipment, and disrupting supplies to the Russian army.
But it has also frustrated hundreds of Russian sellers who depend on online marketplaces for their livelihoods, making the war feel closer to home after almost four and a half years.
“I am a mother of a disabled child, I’ve built the business myself,” one woman complained on an expletive-laden social media post that went viral.
“I’ve lost 1m roubles (£9,500; $12,700)… We’re already getting screwed over from every direction as it is.”
In Ukraine’s first attack on Wildberries at the weekend, two warehouses were hit, at Elektrostal east of Moscow and in Kotovsk in the Tambov region, some 400km (250 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
Seven workers on a nightshift were killed in Kotovsk and one was fatally wounded at Elektrostal. Dozens more were injured and goods worth an estimated at £750m ($1bn) were destroyed.
Kyiv said it had struck “major logistics facilities” used to “supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment”.
Unlike Western retail giant Amazon, which sells goods directly alongside its marketplace business, Wildberries and Ozon act almost entirely as marketplaces, connecting independent sellers with buyers across Russia, storing and delivering their goods and handling payments.
This means many of the losses incurred in the attacks have been borne by businesses.
For one woman, who sells stationery items, Wildberries is the only distribution channel. The day after she delivered her goods to the Elektrostal warehouse near Moscow last Friday, she learned that it had all gone up in flames.
She still has other inventory left, but this time of the year is important for her business, as parents and students stock up for the new autumn term.
Another Wildberries trader who sells teenage clothing, told the BBC she had lost about 1.4m roubles (£13,300) worth of stock. She is halting new supplies for a few weeks.
“The outlook for working with Wildberries is very murky,” she said. “Right now I have enough of a safety cushion to survive the current losses, but if there are more strikes, I probably won’t manage.”
Neither woman expects compensation. Earlier this month, less than two weeks before the attacks, a clause was added to their contracts, including drone attacks in the list of “force majeure events” for which Wildberries is not liable.
Company owner Tatiana Kim has promised “not to abandon” the sellers and some compensation has been paid to a number of small businesses. She has also offered temporary discounts and waived shipment fees, but this has done little to calm fears of further attacks.
Supporting small and medium-sized businesses has been among Vladimir Putin’s declared priorities even in wartime, and framed as a backbone of resilience in the face of Western sanctions.
But the Russian state has been unable to shield the sector from the war’s impact, and there have been several shocks to businesses since the start of the year.
VAT went up from 20% to 22% in January, with extra funding earmarked for defence, and tax breaks for some businesses were scrapped.
Some 209,000 small and medium-sized companies closed in the first quarter of 2026, according to business intelligence platform Kontur.Fokus. That is 9% more than in the first three months of 2025.
Widespread internet shutdowns and a crackdown on popular messaging apps led to further troubles, and Moscow businesses lost tens of millions of dollars in one week in March, according to some estimates.
And then came the fuel crisis, triggered by Ukrainian strikes on oil depots, refineries and supply routes.
“There are already a lot of nails, and they keep hammering them in. Is [the attack on Wildberries warehouses] another nail in the coffin? Well, yes, of course,” Prof Ruben Eniklopov of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona told the BBC.
Small businesses in Russia have proved resilient in the past, but inflation is high, the budget deficit is widening, and oil and gas revenues are 23% lower than in the first six months of last year.
Russia has vast financial reserves, accumulated in peacetime, but its war in Ukraine is increasingly swallowing resources, starving the civilian economy of growth.
Additional reporting by Olga Shamina.
