Ukrainian drones have turned Wildberries into a weak spot in Putin's war economy
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Russian online retail group Wildberries convinced Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin that it could be more than just Russia's answer to Amazon. It could also "challenge the US-led payment system globally."
But after Ukrainian airstrikes hit five of the company's warehouses over the past week, Wildberries has instead become another weak spot in the Russian president's war chest, the Financial Times reports .
The attacks are part of a new Ukrainian campaign that is largely leveraging domestic advances in long-range drone technology to bring the aftermath of Putin's fifth-year-long invasion into the homes of ordinary Russians. Ukrainian strikes have damaged Russian oil refineries in the heart of Moscow and even in remote Siberia, forcing one of the world's largest energy producers to impose rationing at gas stations and import fuel, according to media reports.
Now, attacks on Russia's e-commerce sector threaten to upend one of the country's largest companies, which reported a turnover of 6.1 trillion rubles last year and proposed a bold plan for global expansion to Putin in 2024, journalists say.
Wildberries is a mass-market platform targeting Putin's key constituency: low-income Russians living outside Moscow and St. Petersburg. Its network of pickup points extends into small towns and villages, where they have become key hubs of local life. The strikes, which began last Saturday, reportedly destroyed billions of dollars' worth of inventory in fires that sent huge plumes of black smoke billowing over cities in five Russian regions.
In the latest attack, Ukrainian drones hit a Wildberries facility in the Leningrad Region near St. Petersburg, causing a massive fire. Regional Governor Alexander Drozdenko confirmed the attack.
Alexander Kolyandr, director of Eurasia Group, noted that the economic damage will extend beyond lost inventory. "The loss of goods will ruin thousands of merchants, leading to unpaid taxes, loan defaults, and so on," he stated, adding that the attacks will deprive the state of tens of billions of rubles in taxes from major taxpayers.
Ukraine justified the attacks as retaliation for Russian strikes on warehouses of Nova Poshta, Ukraine's private postal service.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Wildberries' logistics network was used to supply the Russian army with "drone components, navigation equipment, and other gear."
Although Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, denied this, sellers on the Wildberries platform are offering products that could be used to make combat drones or as basic supplies for soldiers on the front lines, such as body armor and helmets, the article states.
These goods, many of which are imported from China and fall under Western dual-use regulations, are popular among grassroots war supporters who raise funds to equip Russian troops and build crude drones as part of a "people's military-industrial complex."
The vast majority of products sold on Wildberries, which built its reputation as an online clothing retailer targeting women, do not have military applications.
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