How the Ukraine is bringing the war home in Russia with drone strikes on this e-commerce staple

The Ukraine is attacking Russia’s economy with strikes on depots belonging to Wildberries, the nation’s biggest e-retailer.

FILE – Smoke rises following a Ukrainian drone attack on a warehouse for online retailer Wildberries in St. Petersburg, Russia on Friday, July 24, 2026, with St. Isaac’s Cathedral seen in foreground. [Photo: UGC via AP]

The attacks began on a July weekend and have continued for a month, stretching from Moscow and St. Petersburg, to cities in the south, and eastward to the Ural Mountains. The targets weren’t oil refineries, maritime hubs or arms plants hit by other Ukrainian strikes, but warehouses that bring the convenience of online shopping across the breadth of Russia.Ukraine’s drones have pummeled the giant depots belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, burning billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise and bringing the war home to the broad public.The attacks on about 20 Wildberries facilities have underlined Kyiv’s ability to strike far and wide inside Russia and posed a new challenge to President Vladimir Putin nearly 4½ years into his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.They have badly shaken the empire built by Tatyana Kim, the country’s richest female entrepreneur, whose fortune has been estimated at $8.1 billion.Hundreds of thousands of individual sellers have lost their merchandise, sending shock waves across Russia’s economy. Wildberries has drawn massive loans from VTB and other banks as it expanded and likely will have trouble repaying them, putting more pressure on the financial system.

An online giant began in a Moscow apartment

Kim, 50, was born in Grozny, the capital of the province of Chechnya, to an ethnic Korean family of an engineer and a teacher. She launched Wildberries in 2004 from her Moscow apartment soon after giving birth to her first child while working as an English teacher.“The idea was born from my own needs, and turned out to be needed by hundreds of thousands,” said Kim, now a mother of........

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