Special Delivery: Ukraine Blows Up ‘Russia’s Amazon’
The Bulwark · C · trust 41/100
With its drone attacks on the e-commerce giant Wildberries, Ukraine hopes to ship the reality of war right to Russians’ doorsteps.
Cathy Young 27 July Upgrade to listen 9 minutes 104 16 10 A passenger plane flies past smoke rising from a Wildberries warehouse near Saint Petersburg after being hit by Ukrainian drones on July 24, 2026. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images) “EVERYONE JUMPED OUT OF BED in the middle of the night, no one could understand what was happening,” said an elderly woman in a short video clip that went viral in Russia over the last few days. She was talking about a nighttime Ukrainian drone strike on the outskirts of Elektrostal, an industrial city some 36 miles east of Moscow. “Scary isn’t the word,” said the woman. “People thought it was war.”
Did they, now? More than four years into Russia’s war against Ukraine, it’s hard to think of a more tragicomic symbol of the clueless Russian remaining clueless.
The war of aggression came home to Russia itself long ago, with Ukrainian drone and long-range missile strikes deep inside Russian territory—primarily targeting oil refineries and munitions factories and depots—escalating since at least late 2023. Since the start of this summer, Russians have been seeing and feeling the effect of those raids at the gas pump: long lines, closed gas stations, rationing. But the strike that so shook up the woman in the clip from Elektrostal was on a new Ukrainian target of choice: a warehouse belonging to Russia’s biggest online retailer, Wildberries, often nicknamed “Russia’s Amazon.” At least nine Wildberries warehouses—including a major hub in St. Petersburg—have been hit since July 18, with most of them either destroyed or severely damaged.
In a country where online shopping accounts for about a fifth of all retail sales and Wildberries handles about half of all e-commerce orders, that’s hitting where it hurts. Some online commenters have joked that instead of his alleged goals of the “demilitarization” and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is getting the “ de-wildberrization ” of Russia.
Kyiv has described the Wildberries strikes as retaliation against continuing Russian attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and also cited the firm’s role as a seller of military and dual-use goods : military helmets (described as combat-tested), bulletproof vests, radios, first-aid kits, and fiber-optic cable for drones. The Wildberries website has now apparently disabled searches for “SVO”—the Russian acronym for “special military operation”—and “everything for SVO.” But related keywords seem to still work: My own search for “SVO accessories” on Sunday returned over 100,000 items , including “tactical backpacks,” helmets, and military patches. 1 (The text on one patch uses a pun on the dual meaning of mir as “peace” and “the world” for a global domination joke: “We want mir —preferably all of it.”) Russia has especially little cause for complaint, considering that it has repeatedly bombed sorting facilities and vehicles belonging to the Ukrainian private postal operator Nova Poshta, supposedly because of its use for delivery of dual-use goods.
Opinions differ on whether the military justification holds water under the Geneva Conventions. (It should also be noted that at least nine Russian warehouse workers have been killed in the strikes and dozens have been injured—though, unlike Russia, Ukraine has tried to minimize civilian casualties by striking only at night when there is likely to be minimal staff presence at the facilities.) Be that as it may, there is widespread agreement that the primary purpose of the Ukrainian strikes is not to incinerate some vests, helmets, backpacks, and patches with bad puns. As expatriate Russian commentator Dmitry Bykov put it , “It’s a very legitimate way to shatter not even the Russian economy so much as the Russian consensus that everything is normal.”
WILDBERRIES SELLERS, AT LEAST, are certainly getting an unpleasant taste of the new normal—as evinced by video clips compiled by the exiled dissident network TV-RAIN. “I’m raising two children on my own,” sobs one woman. “I’ve fucking lost everything.” Others point out that you can’t do business when your inventory could be seconds away from burning to a crisp: “Yesterday you were leading a normal life, now you’re a bum.”
The sellers’ dismay has been exacerbated by the fact that on July 7—eleven days before the first warehouse strike—Wildberries had announced a policy change (or “clarification”): From that point forward, “attacks by military hardware and aircraft (including UAVs), weapons of destruction, munitions or their components” will be treated as force majeure and not subject to mandatory compensation. On July 12, another big Russian online retailer, Ozon, sent out a similar notice. Naturally, conspiracy theories have quickly taken off. Could someone at Wildberries have been tipped off about the upcoming strikes by a contact in the Ukrainian military? It’s not inconceivable, given how many personal and family ties still exist between the two countries. But it’s equally possible that the owners simply saw which way the wind was blowing, or which way the drones were flying.
Public outrage, and perhaps fear of government action, did force Wildberries management to announce that the sellers will be compensated—but so far, details remain murky. Several sellers who appear in the TV-RAIN reel complain about pitifully inadequate compensation, such as a 3,000-ruble payout for 800,000 rubles’ worth of destroyed merchandise.
Will Ukraine’s “war is hell” message reach the average middle-class Russians, until recently largely shielded from this war’s effects? Maybe. So far, says TV-RAIN host and analyst Anna Mongait , none of the video reactions from distraught sellers mention the war. There’s no surge of hatred against Ukraine—but no tangible anger at the Kremlin, either. (One young woman in the TV-RAIN compilation cited above does plaintively…
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