E-commerce in Russia goes up in smoke

Mykolaïv, from our correspondent. There are those who watch the fire during a bombardment and those who ignore it, pretending that the spectrum of human behaviour can encompass everything – even the roar, even the smoke, even the idea that the leader of your country has started a very long war against a neighbouring country which, following the attack it suffered, has now transformed itself into a military power. When Ukraine sends its drones against Russia, precisely targeting anything that, upon exploding, might slow down Moscow’s war plans and hasten the reaching of an agreement, photos emerge of Russians looking at the struck target and of Russians who, by contrast, ignore it, walking with the destruction behind them. This week, Kyiv struck the facilities of Wildberries – the country’s most famous e-commerce company, Moscow’s answer to Amazon – on three occasions. First, Ukrainian drones targeted the service’s largest facility, in Elektrostal, in the Moscow region; they then struck two warehouses, one in the Krasnodar region and the other in Stavropol.

The first attack claimed eight lives; some Russians looked on, others turned away, whilst many complained about Wildberries’ security management – a company which, as well as being an integral part of Russian life, is also the country’s largest employer. Ukraine aims to cripple Russia; having struck fuel depots, it is now attempting to shut down the largest platform driving the country’s economy – one relied upon by citizens and many businesspeople alike – and might never have done so had Moscow not chosen, in recent weeks, to target the warehouses of Nova Poshta, Ukraine’s private postal service. The Russians targeted the Ukrainian service, accusing it of trafficking in military equipment; the Ukrainians have stated that Wildberries is not merely an e-commerce platform. The warning remains the same: Ukraine, which has survived the winter and the freezing cold, Ukraine which is revolutionising the war, has now thrown down the gauntlet to Moscow.

Every attack will be met with another: a retaliation that is as symmetrical as possible. The threats and brutality are part of the psychological warfare accompanying Kyiv’s attempts to force Moscow into an agreement and, although they have found a figurehead in former Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, they are now an inseparable feature of this new phase of Ukraine’s war.

Striking at Wildberries also means striking at a narrative, exposing a scandal, as well as demonstrating that everything in Russia is now part of the war, everything is devoted to the Kremlin’s ‘special military operation’ against Kyiv: the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said that Wildberries’ warehouses were being used to move drone components; the Russians are levelling the same accusation against Nova Poshta. Every nerve centre of the country’s economy depends on the Kremlin, and Wildberries also tells a story of power struggles, feuds between powerful families, business partnerships and armed gangs that elude the Kremlin’s control. The company is led by Tatyana Kim, an entrepreneur of Korean origin who ran the business alongside her husband, Vladislav Bakalchuk, until she decided, two years ago, to merge Wildberries with the Russ Group advertising conglomerate. Everyone was in favour of the deal, including Vladimir Putin himself, but her husband was not. He turned up at the company’s headquarters, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, with a group of armed men sent to him by the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov – it is unclear to what extent Kadyrov was aware of Putin’s support for the deal. Bakalchuk entered the headquarters with the armed men, who opened fire, killing two members of the security staff: since then, Tatyana has, of course, remained the sole head of Wildberries, whilst Vladislav was arrested.

Behind the story of family and knives, however, lies a successful experiment, on which part of the country’s economy also depends. Ukraine wants discontent amongst the population to grow; this autumn could see the next major mobilisation – the first since that of 2022, which brought protesters onto the streets who, in Russia, had remained silent on almost everything, accepting a great deal in exchange for a promise of a peaceful life. Life is far from peaceful in Russia, even if one chooses to turn a blind eye to the smoke of the bombings, and it seems that Kyiv is trying to pile up the damage to bring the edifice crashing down: the fuel shortage, the potential Wildberries crisis, drones entering airspace – all amidst rumours of further mobilisations.